DC: Unified
by Wild Paladin
Summary: The DC Universe dies after too many Crises- and is reborn a bit differently. Ignores all continuities; complete Universal Reboot. There will be no New Gods, no Olympian Gods, and very little to do with outer space. Absolutely no multiple Earths! One world, one continuity,
1. Chapter 1

_This story exists because of my correspondence with _**ff.n**_ member Nimbus Llewelyn. Our back-and-forth on this idea (and about my similar project that involves the other Big Comic Company) enabled me to get off the starting line. Thank you, sir!_

Cataclysm/Rebirth

The seven of them stood at the largest window in the Watchtower, staring mutely at the blackened husk that had once been the Earth. Four of them wept openly, the other three did not— only because their self-control was legendary.

"I can't believe… I can't believe we couldn't stop it," Superman said, his voice choked. "I can't believe we failed after all this time…."

"It's not just here," Jonn said. "It's the entire galaxy, perhaps the entire universe. But it happened so suddenly— what could have caused this?"

"Or who." Batman turned away from the window and said, his voice a thing of black ice and razor edges, "If there's an intelligence behind this, we owe it to… everyone we lost to find it and destroy it."

From a shadow near the window, a voice spoke, a voice that they'd all heard before, but that still gave most of them chills.

"There is no intelligence behind this disaster, Batman," said the man they knew only as the Stranger as he stepped out of the shadows. "Only entropy is to blame."

Batman rounded on the Stranger and said, "That's ridiculous— the universe is comparatively young, it can't possibly be winding down yet."

"The universe is, as you say, young, as such things are measured," the Stranger said, moving to stand at the window next to Wonder Woman. "Yet think on this, Batman… how many times has it been fractured into multitudes, rejoined… and shattered again?"

"Then we can rejoin it again," the Flash said, nodding. "We've done it before, we can—"

"No, Flash," the Stranger said. "It is over."

"The other universes—" Green Lantern started.

"Gone already," the Stranger said, his voice sad beyond description. "This… continuum is doomed."

"Bull!" snarled Hawkman. "There's a way, there's _always_ a way, Stranger."

"Yes," Wonder Woman agreed. "Hawkman is right. You never appear to tell us things are hopeless, Stranger. You always bring hope, always."

"This continuum is doomed," the Stranger said again. Then a trace of a smile appeared on his face, barely visible in the shadow that his fedora always cast, and never mind the amount of light or its direction. "But there can be a rebirth. A new continuum, filled by a single universe, as it should have been from the beginning. Strong, firm… and inviolable."

"And the cost?" asked the Martian Manhunter.

"You seven must give up your… energies, your lives, _voluntarily,_ at a place… I will take you where it must be done." The Stranger sighed. "If you give up your lives, the universe that results will mirror this one. You will all exist again… and you will protect your world, your continuum, as you always have.

"Will you do this thing?"

Superman drew himself up, scrubbed the tears from his face, and said, "Yes."

"For the universe? Yes." Green Lantern stepped up beside Superman.

"I'm in," the Flash said.

"Of course," Wonder Woman said, stepping to Superman's other side and taking his hand.

"I have watched a world die," the Manhunter said, his eyes glowing red. "This is the second I have lost. To save a universe… I will do as you say."

"Death and rebirth are a big part of who I am," Hawkman said. "I'm in."

The six of them looked at Batman, who stood mute for a moment before speaking. "We'll exist again… as we are here?"

"Yes," the Stranger said.

"Then… no."

For a moment, silence reigned— then the other six all started talking at once.

Finally, Superman yelled "QUIET!" and got it. He turned to Batman and asked, "Why, Bruce?"

For a moment, Batman did not answer. Then he drew in a breath and he said, "I swore an oath never to knowingly let another child suffer as I did. I swore it to my parents' memory, and I have kept that oath for all of my life. It's _who I am_… and I can't let another version of me suffer that again. I can't— and I won't."

Again, the others started talking— but this time, Batman himself demanded silence.

"This is who I am." He looked at each one of them, then said, "You can't change it. And the Stranger said that it had to be voluntary, so forcing me won't work— will it, Stranger?"

The Stranger's shoulders sagged, and he said, "No. It won't. And it must be all seven of you."

"Is there a way… what if we could make it so that you didn't have to watch your parents die, Bruce?" Superman asked. "There's got to be something we can do."

"If the Stranger can tell me that the new Bruce Wayne won't have to see his parents murdered in front of his eyes, then I'll participate." Batman looked to the Stranger. "Can you make that happen? Or can we?

"Can _I_ make that happen?"

"I… you cannot," the Stranger said. "You will not survive the rebirth, even temporarily, you can't."

Something about the way the Stranger spoke made Jonn Jonzz investigate further. "Could I survive this 'rebirth,' just for the time necessary to insure that Bruce Wayne's parents aren't murdered.?"

"You cannot." The Stranger put a gentle, barely detectable emphasis on his pronunciation of the word 'you.'

"What about me?" Superman asked. "Can I survive the rebirth of the universe long enough to prevent Bruce from seeing his parents murdered?"

"You could," the Stranger agreed. "But… is it wise to leave that continuum without a Batman?"

"If that's the only way to see that the continuum exists at all?" Superman actually smiled. "Then it's worth it— if it's necessary."

"Why wouldn't it be necessary?" Wonder Woman asked. "If you save his parents, why would Bruce become Batman?"

"I get it!" the Flash said, and he grinned. "Inspiration is just as powerful a tool as pain. I became the Flash because of the men who sore the name before I did, and I kept the look that Barry wore because he inspired me."

Superman turned to the Stranger. "Can it work?"

"It can," the Stranger replied slowly. "But… it will result in some changes to the continuum, and to you specifically, as you are reborn in that place. It may have wider-reaching effects…."

"Will there still be heroes?" Hawkman asked.

"Yes." The Stranger smiled a little. "There will be heroes. And Bruce Wayne may still grow up to become the Batman… for the right reasons.

"We need to be as quick as possible, the window for rebirth is… beyond two hours from now, the chances of success drop drastically."

Superman's smile widened, and he turned to Batman. "I think I'll need to borrow your costume, Bruce— and I'll want some voice lessons. The martial arts I can handle, thanks to my knowledge of Klurkor."

"Why bother with a martial art?" Green Lantern asked. "Even a Kryptonian one? You're _Superman,_ you know."

"Because Bruce needs to see a man saving his parents lives," Hawkman said, a hard smile on his face. "Not a Superman."

"Yes," Superman agreed. "Bruce… will you let me do this?"

For a long moment, Batman said nothing. Finally, he said, "The Stranger said that it would have effects on you as you're reborn… in the new universe. Are you sure you want to do this? To have your last act as a hero be… not you?"

"I'm sure," Superman said. Then he put a hand on Batman's shoulder and said, "And to go out saving two lives, saving a child from a lifetime of pain and loneliness? Bruce, that's _me._ That's _Superman,_ and never mind what I'm wearing."

"Then… I have a spare costume here," Batman said. "I want to go out as Batman, not Bruce, so I'm keeping this one.

"The voice… did you ever see the original Highlander? Good, then start by trying to talk like the Kurgen…."

Half an hour later, Hawkman, the Flash, Green Lantern, the Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman, and what looked like two of the Batman presented themselves to the Stranger.

"We're ready," Superman said, recognizable by his undisguised voice.

"Very well," the Stranger said. "Follow me."

The Stranger walked through the doorway from meeting room to teleporter room, and the seven heroes followed. As each passed the arch of the doorway, they vanished from the Justice League's Watchtower satellite and reappeared on the surface of a planet, though not one that many of them were familiar with.

"Where are we?" Wonder Woman asked.

"Oa," Green Lantern replied. "The planet of the Guardians… and the closest thing to a planetary center that the universe has."

"Yes," the Stranger replied. He pointed down the hill they had appeared on, and the heroes saw a whirling, strobing ball of light that looked to be a dozen yards tall. All the colors any of them had ever seen were visible… though the ball wasn't very bright.

"There." The Stranger started down the hill, and the Justice League followed after.

Once they all stood in front of the ball, the Stranger said, "For all but Superman, you have but to step into the light, and give your essence to this… seed of a universe.

"Superman, you will need to place your hand inside it and wait. Then… I will protect you from what follows, and move you to the place and time needed for you to keep your agreement with Batman."

"All right," Superman said. He looked around at the other six. "It has been a pleasure to know you all, to work with you… to save lives beside you.

"A pleasure… and an honor."

For a moment, no one moved, then the Flash flickered over to stand in front of Superman.

"Somebody has to go first, and since we are who we are, that pretty much has to be me." He hugged Superman, said, "See you around, big guy," and turned to the ball of light.

"HEY, BARRY!" he shouted. "JAY! BART!

"LAST ONE TO REINCARNATE'S A ROTTEN EGG!"

Then there was a streak of red and yellow— and the ball of light turned scarlet and gold for a moment.

"Like the man said, we are who we are," Hawkman said. His wings flapped, and he left the ground. In seconds, he was a couple of hundred feet in the air— and he turned and dived into the ball of light with the mace he carried cocked to swing, roaring a challenge as he dove. The ball flashed gold and green as Hawkman vanished.

"Yes." The Martian Manhunter returned to his natural form, tall, slender, and much less human. "My friends, I thank you for treating me as one of you.

"Farewell."

Jonn Jonzz simply stepped into the light, which burned the bright green of his skin for a long moment afterwards.

Green Lantern turned and shook each of his remaining friends' hands, then smiled a little and said, "Once a Green Lantern… always burning!"

Like Hawkman before him, Green Lantern shot into the air, much, much higher. At the edge of the ancient planet's atmosphere, he stopped, turned… and dove, a blaze of emerald fire expanding from his form and trailing after him as he went. When he passed into the ball of light, it burned emerald for a long moment.

"Clark." Batman turned and offered his hand to Superman. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Goodbye, Clark, Diana."

Without another word, Batman turned and walked into the light, which turned the charcoal gray of his cloak and cowl for a moment as he vanished.

Wonder Woman turned to Superman, hugged him long and tight, and said, "We will meet again, Clark."

"I know," Superman replied. "I'll look forward to it."

Wonder Woman smiled through the tears she was shedding, then turned, leapt into the air and flew into the light. Red, blue and gold rippled through the ball after she vanished into it.

"Okay," Superman said, and he sounded a good deal more like Batman than he did himself. "Let's do this, Stranger."

"Yes," the Stranger agreed. "Place your hand into the light, Superman. I will move us away at the moment of… renewal."

Superman place his gray-gloved hand into the ball of light, and immediately felt a draining sensation. As the ball rippled blue and red, with just a touch of yellow, he said, very mildly, "Ouch."

"It will not hurt for long, my friend." The Stranger watched the ball with his peculiar, blank eyes, and when it suddenly burst into a rainbow of light and contracted into a tiny, brilliant ball of energy, he stepped between Superman and the light, swept up the edges of the voluminous cloak he wore, and—

Light exploded around them, light and matter and pure power, and Superman could only stare, stare at the beauty of it all until he could barely stand the sheer _wonder_ that he felt—

—and they were elsewhere, standing on a hill looking down on the lights of what appeared to be a thriving city.

"Where… are we?" Superman gasped, dropping to the grass. "And why… do I feel so weak?"

"We are on a hill outside of Gotham City," the Stranger said evenly. "It is Friday the fourth of October of 1996, and in the city below us, an eight year-old boy is leaning forward with excitement as, on the movie screen in front of him, Zorro begins to fight the villainous Captain Pasquale.

"Your weakness… you are no longer Superman. You are only a man, now— the energies that made you Superman went into the birth of this place. That enough remains to let you live for a time… that is why this place will be different from the universe it was modeled after."

"Worth it," Superman said. He stood, threw back his shoulders, and said, "Worth it all, Stranger, so long as there will still be heroes."

"There will be," the Stranger assured him. "One of the best and brightest will be a Kryptonian, my friend. Of that, you may rest assured."

"Thank you." Superman took a deep breath and said in a voice that was deeper, more harsh— the voice of Batman— "Let's go. I'm not the tactician Bruce is, I need more time to plan things out than he would."

The Stranger raised his cloak again— and the two men vanished.

Eight year-old Bruce Wayne came out of the back exit of the movie theater in a leap, swinging an imaginary sword at an imaginary villain and yelling "Ha! Now we will see who is the better man, Captain!"

"So, not as boring as you thought it would be, eh, Bruce?" Thomas Wayne said, laughing as his son turned and bowed to him and his wife.

"No, Dad, you were right," Bruce said, standing upright. "Totally right, that was so cool!"

"I certainly liked it," Mary agreed. "Of course, I'm looking forward to the new one they're starting now, too. Antonio Banderas should be an excellent Zorro."

"There's gonna be another one?" Bruce asked, turning to walk backwards, facing his parents. "When? Can we see it?"

"I suspect we'll see it, yes, Bruce," Thomas said. "Although if your mother's going to drool over Mr. Banderas, we may— Bruce, stop!"

Bruce stopped in place, surprised by his father's tone of voice. He looked around to see what he'd been about to back into, and felt his father's hand on his shoulder, pulling him back and behind his parents.

Then Bruce saw the man with the gun, and his questions died on his lips.

"Wallet," the man snarled. "Watches. Jewelry. Now!"

"Take it easy," Thomas Wayne said, reaching slowly into his coat. "You'll get everything you want, just take it easy."

"Shut up and give it to me!" the man nearly screamed. "Now! Now, or I start shooting!"

He raised the gun, pointed it at Thomas Wayne's face—

—and a shadow detached itself from the alley wall, or maybe the fire escape above the Waynes, and dropped to the concrete between the family and the gunman, leaving the gun pointed at it, not Dr. Wayne.

"Not today," the figure said in a low, guttural voice— and swept a hand up under the crook's gun-hand, deflecting it up. Bruce saw a dark-gray glove close around the crook's wrist and twist, heard a crack as some bone broke, and the gun dropped. The shadowy figure caught it by the barrel before it hit the ground, then tossed it to one side, where it landed neatly on a bag of garbage. He stepped sideways, and Bruce saw that he was dressed like a… bat? "Not _ever."_

The crook swung at the head of the big man in the bat costume, and the man blocked it easily, the edge of his hand catching the crook's other wrist. Then he stepped closer, kneed the crook in the stomach, and, as the attempted robber bent double, punched him square in the side of the neck

The crook collapsed like a sack of meat, and the bat-man bent over him, tied him up with some long, thin rope that he pulled from a compartment on his belt— which was covered with pouches and compartments of all sizes.

"Yes, I'd like to report a… an attempted mugging," Thomas's voice said, and Bruce looked up to see his dad on his cellular phone. "We're in Park Row, behind the Park Row Cinema. No, we're… not hurt. Someone… someone stopped it. Yes, all right."

The bat-costumed man stood up and looked around. "You're all right? All of you?"

"Yes, we're… fine, thank you," Thomas said slowly. "May I ask who you are?"

"I'm someone who wants to save lives," the man replied. "That's all."

"That was so cool!" Bruce burst out. "It was like— you were like Zorro, only better! I want to be just like you someday!"

"You can be," the bat-man said, squatting in front of Bruce. "You can be— but it will mean a lot of very hard work. You'll have to learn more than just to fight. You'll need to be a detective, maybe the greatest detective in the world. You'll need to be a scientist, an acrobat, and even a thief, so that you can catch thieves.

"It will be very hard work— but I believe that you can do it."

"I will!" Bruce said. "I will, and someday, I'll save someone like you saved us. I promise, I will!"

"I believe you," the man in the bat-costume said gravely. "But now… I need to go. Take care, folks.

"Work hard, young man."

"I will!" Bruce said.

"Wait, you can't just leave, the police— oh, hell, you saved our lives, I think," Thomas said. "Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome." The man turned and pulled a grappling-hook-loaded gun of some sort from his belt, aimed it up— and stopped when Bruce spoke again.

"Wait," Bruce said. "Why are you dressed like that? Are you a superhero? Like those guys from the JSA used to be?"

For moment, the man didn't answer, then he said, "Something like that. But you don't need powers to be a hero, young man.

"Remember that."

"Yes, sir."

The gun-thing chuffed, the grapple caught, and the bat-man vanished upwards into the darkness.

Even as a police car pulled up at the mouth of the alley, Bruce Wayne looked up at his parents and said, "Dad, Mom, do you think I could start taking karate lessons?"

On the rooftop, Superman heard this, and he smiled. He felt a presence at his side, and turned to see the Stranger.

"What happens now?" he asked the mysterious figure.

"Now we go back… and we both step into the seed just before it explodes," the Stranger answered. "We'll be on the other side of it, so won't see ourselves.

"It is an ending… but also a beginning."

"I saved a boy from a lifetime of pain," Superman said, "and maybe made it so that he and I can be friends, in whatever incarnations we take here, not just… sometimes-allies who respect each other.

"That's enough for me. I'm ready. Let's go, Stranger."

The Stranger swept his cloak around them both… and they vanished.

88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

_Eight years earlier, outside Smallville, Kansas:_

Martha Kent stepped out of the rental truck with her husband, looked at the house in front of them and said, "Well, it looks nice on the outside, at least."

"The inside's nice, too," Jonathan said. "And the furnace was only recently replaced. They put in central air at the same time. Also, the kitchen is huge."

"That's good," Martha said. "More room to spread the mess around as I learn to cook, Jonathan.

"Are you sure you knew what you were doing, marrying a spoiled rich girl who has no idea how to keep house, let alone be a farmer's wife?"

"I'm sure," Jonathan said, and he kissed her. "Are you sure that it's worth having your family disown you to marry an Agriculture-Degree-wielding, inexperienced farmer?"

"Yes," Martha said, and she wrapped him in a hug. "The only part I regret is that… well, the money would have made it easier to adopt."

"Hey, we'll be fine," Jonathan said against her hair. "Martha, you know I don't care about the genetic end of things, so if we can't adopt, we can see about a donor father."

"I want your child," Martha said quietly, "or I want to adopt. No middle ground."

"Stubborn woman," Jonathan sighed.

"Very," Martha agreed. "The sterility sucks, but losing you to cancer before we even got married? That would have been unbearable, Jonathan Kent.

"Now, let's go look around our house, shall we?"

They did that, then started unloading the truck. They finished the unloading just before nine, and Jonathan grinned. "Always marry an athletic woman. We got it all in, no help. Great deal.

"Hey, shall we go to town and hope something's open, or just eat the leftover chicken?"

"The Colonel is fine with me," Martha said. "I want food, then a shower, then… then I want to make this _our house,_ Jonathan Kent."

"That sounds like a plan," Jonathan agreed. "It's nice out— picnic on the porch?"

They ate chicken and coleslaw on the front porch, drank sodas from the cooler they'd kept in the cab of the truck, and relaxed after the long trip from Pennsylvania.

They'd just finished eating when a light suddenly appeared near the side of the barn closest to them, and they both heard a peculiar rumbling sound.

"What the hell…?" Jonathan said, standing up and taking a step that way.

"I don't know," Martha said, "but let's go look."

She started that way, and Jonathan followed with a muttered, "I don't even know where the heck the flashlight is, and she's just walking over there. Good grief."

He caught up with his wife halfway to the barn, and they both stopped a few feet from the light and looked at it. From where they stood, is looked like a simple disk of blue-white light, maybe two feet in diameter, but they could both hear sounds that made them think of collapsing buildings, earthquakes and other disasters from the direction of the light.

"Maybe… the other side?" Jonathan suggested.

"Good idea," Martha agreed, and they walked around to where they stood between the disk of light and the barn— and both stared with mouths open at what they saw.

From this side, the light appeared to be a narrow ring of blue-white— surrounding a portal to… somewhere else.

"My god, what's happening?" Martha said as she stared.

"I don't know, but I don't think it's anything good," Jonathan said.

They could see some sort of lab through the window, and a man and woman, both dressed very oddly, in some sort of one-piece outfits that combined coverall and robe, at a table some five or six feet away, bent over something that the Kents couldn't see. Out a window past them, the Kents could see a city, though very plainly no city on Earth— the towers and spires could never have been designed on Earth, and they could see vehicles that looked like they came out of _Star Wars_ zipping here and there.

"Jonathan?" Martha said, her voice breathless.

"I don't know, sweetheart," Jonathan said. "But I don't think we can do anything to help them, that… hole, or warp, or whatever it is, isn't big enough for us to go through, or for them to come here."

Then the woman on the other side of the window picked up whatever it was that she and the man had been bent over, turned— and saw Jonathan and Martha standing there and staring.

The woman said something sharp in a language that neither of the Kents understood, and the man looked up, too. The expression on his face when he saw them could only be described as "pure relief." He straightened, picked up something from the bench, and joined the woman as she walked towards them, carrying whatever it was that she'd picked up from the bench.

"Oh, my god!" Martha said as she realized what the woman was carrying. "Jonathan, that's a baby!"

"I… yes," was all Jonathan could get out. "Yes, it is."

The man reached the hole just ahead of the woman, stuck the odd-looking instrument he had in his hand through the disk— the warp, obviously— let it hum for a few seconds, then pulled it back, looked at it, and nodded once, sharply. He spoke to the woman in a language that sounded like nothing Jonathan or Martha had ever heard before, and she replied. Together, they looked up at Jonathan and Martha.

The man pointed at the baby the woman held, then at the window behind them, where the Kents could see buildings toppling and burning. The man shook his head once, and frowned. Then he pointed at the baby the woman held, and at the Kents.

"You want… yes." Jonathan nodded and stepped forward, held out his arms towards the disk. "Yes. We'll take the baby. Then he pointed at the edges of the warp, and made a spreading motion. "You can come, too, just… make it bigger."

The man closed his eyes and shook his head. He said something, and though Jonathan understood not a word, he understood the tone of voice; sadness and regret.

"I don't think they can make it bigger," Martha whispered. "Oh, Jonathan, those poor people—"

"I know," Jonathan Kent said quietly. "I know, Martha."

The man bent over and kissed the baby, the woman did the same… and they stepped towards the warp together. The woman shifted her grip on the child and, being very careful not to touch the edges of the warp, passed the child through the hole in space. Jonathan took the crying baby, stepped back from the warp, and looked at the man and woman on the other side.

"We'll take care of him," Jonathan said, cradling the baby carefully. "I… you don't understand a word I'm saying, but I promise you, we'll take care of your child."

The man and the woman each made the same gesture, a sort of reaching-smoothing thing, and the man nodded again, then reached towards something outside the frame of the warp— and the hole in space closed instantly, as though it had never been.

If not for the crying baby in his arms, Jonathan Kent wouldn't have believed that it ever happened.

"Jonathan… let's get inside," Martha said, stepping closer to him. "It's a little cool out here."

Jonathan blinked, looked at his wife, and chuckled. " 'It's a little cool out here.' We just got handed a baby from another planet, or maybe dimension, and that's all you have to say?"

"It's too cool for the baby, Jonathan," Martha said patiently. "Come on. Inside."

They went inside, Jonathan carrying the baby, whose cries trailed off as they walked, and who was asleep by the time they actually got into the house.

"Set him on the couch," Martha said, and she went to kneel there. "We'll need to go to town— no, wait, Smallville, we're not shopping for baby things in a town called Smallville, everyone will know that we didn't already have them if we do that."

"Martha," Jonathan said slowly, "what are you thinking?"

"Why, I'm thinking that no one here knows us, Jonathan Kent," Martha said. "For pity's sake, you even bought this house through the mail.

"And if no one knows us, they can't very well know that we didn't just have a baby."

"Martha Kent, we don't even know if this baby can pass for human," Jonathan said, "and you're already planning on keeping him?"

"Yes," Martha said. "The parents looked perfectly human. And we can't have a child of our own, so… well, Jonathan think about it. It looks to me like George Bush is going to win the election in November. So you really want to turn a baby over to the government when that government is being run by a man who used to be head of the CIA?" While she talked, Martha had been unwrapping the blankets from around the baby, and now she took off the cloth diaper. "Oops. We're keeping _her,_ Jonathan.

"She looks like a perfectly human little girl."

"A girl," Jonathan said, and he grinned rather suddenly. "Well… this is gonna be pretty difficult, Martha. We'll have to come up with a reason why we don't have a birth certificate for her."

"Or get one," Martha said, a mischievous gleam in her eye as she wrapped the diaper again. "I have some money, Jonathan, that I managed to get out before the parents went insane. And I have some jewelry we can sell if we need to. We'll need to go to Kansas City, probably, but I'm sure that, given the number of migrant workers around, we can find a person who forges things like birth certificates easily enough."

Jonathan shook his head— but his grin stayed on. "I didn't marry an athletic woman, I married a potential criminal."

"But only for good causes." Martha stood up, picked the baby up and said, "Let's go. Salina's only forty minutes drive, this time of night, and they'll have something that's open late enough for us to shop for the baby."

"Okay, I know when I'm beat," Jonathan said. He went ahead of Martha, opening doors for her and holding the baby while she climbed into the truck. After he'd gotten in and started the vehicle, he said, "So… what are we naming our little girl, Martha?"

"We're not following my family's tradition and naming her after my maternal grandmother," his wife replied immediately. "That's how I ended up with a name that's at least thirty years out-of-date."

"Fair enough," Jonathan agreed. "What about… well, I told you that my sister died when I was fifteen. How would you feel about naming the baby after her?"

"I think that's a good idea," Martha said. "And maybe your mom's name for a middle name? She's been nothing less than wonderful to me, your mom."

"Clarissa Lynn Kent," Jonathan said, tasting the name. "I like it. Thank you, Martha."

"You're welcome," his wife said. She looked at the baby in her arms, who was watching her with brilliant blue eyes. "Hello, Clarissa. Welcome home, sweetheart."

The Kents succeeded in their planned deception of their new neighbors and community. Martha did manage to find a forger who produced a birth certificate for Clarissa. They simply didn't mention the baby to Jonathan's family in Pennsylvania for the first year, then told them that they'd adopted the girl.

Clarissa seemed perfectly normal for a great many years, if extremely bright (which pleased both her parents no end). It wasn't until just after her thirteenth birthday (celebrated, unknown to her, on the day that she'd been given to her parents) that anything unusual happened.

Clarissa had gotten off of the school bus, grabbed the mail from the box across from the end of the quarter-mile lane, and stood there reading a late birthday card and note from her Grandma Kent. She'd started to cross the road while still reading— and not noticed the oncoming car until she heard a horn and a screech of brakes.

Clarissa instinctively jumped— and came down on the far side of the barn behind the house, more than a quarter mile from where she'd started. In addition, the impact of her landing startled her father, who was working on the combine back there.

"Clarissa, what the heck— honey, are you okay?" Jonathan said after he'd spun around to see his daughter, pale as a ghost, standing a few feet from him. "What the heck was that thump? I thought the combine had fallen off the jack, except it's not on a jack."

"Daddy, I… I jumped." Clarissa swallowed hard and tried to explain better. "I was out by the road and I wasn't paying enough attention, and… and there was a car, and I jumped, and I… landed _here_."

Jonathan stepped closer, and stared. Clarissa was standing at the center of a small divot in the ground, and after a moment, he realized that it was a small _crater_— from the impact of her landing.

"Oh, boy," Jonathan said. He stepped close and hugged his daughter. "Come on, sweetheart, let's go find your mom. Looks like it's time we had a talk."

An hour later, Clarissa sat staring at her parents— adoptive parents, she guessed— and said, "So… I'm an alien!?"

"You're our daughter," the Kents said together, and Jonathan added, "You just happen to be from… somewhere else, Clarissa. We don't know where, have no way of knowing, but… well, from the sounds we heard, the things we saw, and other things… I think that wherever it was… it probably isn't there anymore."

"My parents… the ones who… who gave me to you," Clarissa said slowly. "What did they look like? Do I look like them? I mean— my hair's black, you guys both have brown hair. Is it… from them?"

"One second," Martha said, and she got up from the kitchen table and disappeared upstairs. When she came back, she had a sketchbook. She sat down again and handed the book to Clarissa.

"What… you drew them?" Clarissa asked, looking hopeful.

"I did," Martha said. "Drawing was maybe the only hobby I ever had that my parents encouraged, and right now, I'm very grateful."

"I've been grateful since you started selling paintings," Jonathan said. "Got us through at least the first couple of years, your paintings."

Clarissa was looking at the big sketchpad in front of her, and slowly, she reached out and opened it.

On the very first page was a picture of the man and woman who'd given Clarissa to the Kents, caught at the end of that reaching-smoothing gesture that they'd made after passing her through the warp.

"I… look like them, a little, don't I?" Clarissa asked, her voice thick.

"A lot," Jonathan said. "Your birth-father's hair and eyes, your mother's features. You do look like them."

"I… think I'm glad." Clarissa looked up at her parents, her real parents, and said, "You… I hope you don't mind, but I'm glad I look like them."

"I don't mind at all," Martha said. "Jonathan?"

"Not a bit," he said. He leaned forward and caught Clarissa's gaze. "Honey, those people loved you enough to give you up to… to entrust your life to something about ten thousand steps beyond 'complete strangers.' That's a damned good reason to be glad that you look like them, if you ask your mother and me."

"Thank you," Clarissa sniffled. She turned the page and said, "You saw… the place?"

"A very little of it," Martha said. "Just out the window in the… I'm pretty sure it was a laboratory they were in. But it was… beautiful, Clarissa, and I drew as much as I could remember, so that… well, we intended to tell you someday, sweetheart, but we were going to wait until you were older. Adolescence is hard enough without adding something like this to it, we wanted to wait until you were sixteen, at least."

"I… I'm glad I know," Clarissa said. "I think… I don't know what I think. But I know that I'm glad you're my parents, and that you cared enough to… to be honest with me, and—"

The girl sobbed suddenly, and got up to hug both her parents while holding the picture of the people who had given her up to save her life against her chest.


	2. Histories

Histories

_(The following is excerpted from The Golden Age: A History of the All-Star Squadron, by John Chambers, 2010)_

The first superhero was either the Crimson Avenger, who first showed his crimson-cloaked self in October of 1938, or the Flash, who first appeared in January of 1940— depends on whether you insist that we define a superhero as having powers, or if simply wearing a costume and concealing your identity is enough.

Either way, both men served in the Justice Society of America, as well as in its wartime successor, President Roosevelt's All-Star Squadron. After World War II and the disbanding of the Squadron, the Crimson Avenger vanished into retirement for a long time, while the Flash returned to service in the Justice Society.

But they were both there, along with many others, the day the JSA disappeared, the day the world thought that they died at the hand of Peder "Per" DeGaton, an American citizen born to a Swedish mother and Spaniard father, who somehow gained devices that gave him super-powers involving the manipulation of time. On July the fourth of 1952, Per DeGaton appeared in the small town of Danvers, Illinois, where he took the entire town— roughly five hundred souls— hostage against the All-Star Squadron showing up "to battle me, my creations, and my forces, to give me my chance at revenging myself on them for their slights against me."

The members of the All-Star Squadron who could be reached went to Danvers, despite one peculiar fact; not one of them had ever heard of Per DeGaton, a man who had disappeared in March of 1945 from his home in the Bronx, and was reported missing by his employer, self-styled "temporal physicist" Zachary Baldwin, a wealthy man who claimed that time travel was not merely possible, but inevitable.

Per DeGaton, a small, red-haired man dressed in a black outfit vaguely reminiscent of Hitler's Gestapo, had put a force-field dome over Danvers, and he did keep his word. When some sixty-one former members of the Squadron showed up— all that could be reached and were not excused for some reason— he lowered the force field, releasing the townspeople, and teleported himself and the Squadron to an empty field a couple of miles away. There, the All-Stars and DeGaton faced off, and seven members of the vast super-team died in the opening moments of the battle.

DeGaton's mastery over time allowed him to summon and control creatures from seemingly any point in Earth's history, and he wasted no time in summoning a vast array of people and creatures to throw at the heroes. Dinosaurs from several ages, soldiers from several more, mostly, by appearance, from some significant distance into the future.

In the opening moments of the battle, seven heroes died. Airwave, Black Condor, the original Firebrand, Johnny Thunder, Neon the Unknown, the Shining Knight and TNT all died before the Flash finally fought his way through a large contingent of scarlet-skinned people who were fast enough to actually attack him and seize the belt that seemingly was the source of Per DeGaton's power.

When the Flash yanked the belt from DeGaton's waist, an explosion rocked the area, knocked down trees that were as much as a quarter-mile away, and left only the bodies of the seven already-deceased heroes.

The world thought the All-Star Squadron dead, all of them who had gone. The few who hadn't been reached, or who had been deliberately left behind— a few with new families, a couple who weren't yet eighteen— investigated as best they could, but found nothing. Most of those who hadn't gone along disappeared after the investigation failed to yield any fruit, though Neptune Perkins and his wife, Tsunami, remained active on the oceans for many years, saved hundreds, maybe even thousands of lives before apparently retiring in 1975.

Then, on January the seventeenth of 1981, the All-Star Squadron, Per DeGaton and more than five hundred of DeGaton's controlled, time-tossed creatures and troops, appeared out of nowhere in a small park in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, apparently in mid-battle.

The All-Stars shifted their focus immediately, began defending the hundreds of civilians in the area, and they did an amazing job. Only thirty-seven civilians were injured, and only two died.

Of the fifty-four members of the All-Star Squadron who traveled to 1981, only sixteen survived. The dead are listed in the afterword. Here, I will mention only a few, those whose deaths were… exceptionally heroic.

Hawkman and Hawkgirl, the winged wonders, armed only with medieval weaponry, defended a nursery school with some thirty children age five and under from around twenty aliens that stood roughly eight feet high and had weaponry that was at least a couple of centuries ahead of the year they'd arrived in. The Hawks fought and held against the aliens for the two-plus minutes it took for those children's teachers to get them clear, and they never once retreated before the assault, even though both were visibly (and very seriously) wounded.

The Human Bomb led an Allosaurus away from a group of people who'd been sledding on a hill, and while the Allosaurus died when it bit him, it killed him, as well.

Perhaps most memorable was the death of Mister Terrific, the self-styled champion of fair play. With no powers at all, without any special equipment, with no weapon but his fists and feet, Mr. Terrific kept a group of more than two dozen eighteenth-century samurai from getting any further into a nearby retirement home than the lobby. The residents who saw the battle say that Terrific disdained to pick up even the weapon of a fallen samurai— he simply fought them with his hands, his feet, and his knowledge of tactics to take down each of the samurai… and finally fell only after looking around to make sure that all of his opponents were down. According to one of the residents of the home, Mr. Terrific was dead when she reached him less than thirty seconds after he fell, apparently of blood loss.

They all died fighting so save lives, but those four stand out in my mind. Those four… and the man who ended the battle at the cost of his own life.

The Guardian had no powers. He'd been a cop in the forties, stumbled into the life of a costumed adventurer, and taken to it like a duck to water. Over the years, he'd advanced from simple foot-patrol officer to detective, and he learned a lot about observation. He noticed that DeGaton seemed very protective of his left arm, and the watch he wore there. After DeGaton summoned more futuristic warriors, started a push against the Squadron members who were trying to defend a middle school that bordered on it, the Guardian ordered the three heroes he'd been working with— the Atom, Midnight, the second Firebrand, and Iron Munro— to cover him as best they could. He then took the black light projector from the unconscious Phantom Lady, and used it to blind the closest enemies long enough to sneak past them.

The Guardian managed to get behind DeGaton without being seen, and he tried to pin the smaller man, keep his wrist away from his control. Unfortunately, DeGaton had obviously received intensive combat training at some point in his personal timeline, and was able to resist Guardian long enough to produce a gun of some sort and shoot the hero.

Dying, desperate, and unwilling to let DeGaton win, the Guardian pulled DeGaton down with him when he fell, rolled on top of the villain— and slammed the shield that he'd carried since his first night as a costumed adventurer down on DeGaton's wrist and the control device there.

The resulting explosion killed both men.

All of the creatures summoned from the future vanished. Those summoned from the past did not, but the remaining members of the All-Star Squadron were able to contain them, since they were no longer controlled or replenished from the time-stream.

The All-Star Squadron then gathered their wounded, the equipment of the dead heroes that might have been dangerous in the hands of others… and vanished, carried away in a bubble of green energy by Green Lantern.

Of sixty-one heroes, only sixteen survived: The Atom. Commander Steel. Doctor Fate. The Flash. Green Lantern. Hourman. Johnny Quick. Liberty Belle. Phantom Lady. Sandman. Sandy the Golden Boy. Starman. Star-Spangled Kid. Stripesy. Wildcat. Zatara the Magician.

They haven't been seen since, with two exceptions; the magician Giovanni "John" Zatara returned to the work of entertaining the masses. Eventually, he married, and had a daughter, Zatanna Zatara, who has recently started her own magical act.

The second exception… on September the eleventh of 2001, Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four jet airliners and attempted to strike at multiple targets in the United States. Only the very first strike succeeded, hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. After that, the terrorists were all stopped.

Green Lantern stopped the attempt on the South Tower of the WTC, simply caught the plane in a giant green hand and destroyed its engines, then set the plane down at LaGuardia, went in and brought the terrorists out to hand them over to the authorities.

Starman stopped the plane headed for the Pentagon, gradually made it too heavy to fly, then reduced its weight to nothing when the pilot tried to fly it into the ground, landed it gently himself, and cut his way into the plane to knock the hijackers unconscious.

The last was a team effort; Johnny Quick flew Commander Steel and the Flash up to the second Washington-DC-bound airplane (later discovered to have been bound for the United States Capitol Building), the Flash used his ability to vibrate his way through solid matter to take them all into the plane. While Johnny Quick and Commander Steel dealt with the hijackers in the body of the plane, the Flash vibrated into the cockpit and dealt with the hijacker there before letting Commander Steel, an accomplished pilot, in to land the plane.

It should be noted that several passengers of that last plane— United Airlines Flight 93— were preparing to attack the hijackers themselves, and never mind that it would very likely have cost them their lives. They were willing to die to stop the hijacker's plans, and they're every bit as much heroes as are the powered individuals who acted that day— if not more so.

While those five worked to stop the attacks, the other eleven of the sixteen members of the All-Star Squadron who were known to have survived Per DeGaton's cross-time attack showed up to help with relief efforts at the World Trade Center. The five who'd gone to stop the hijackings joined them after they had finished their tasks, and there can be little doubt but that they saved a lot of lives. More than thirteen hundred people died that day… but it could have been much, much worse.

There are hints that one or another of the All-Stars act from time to time. Miraculous rescues. Criminals caught in the act by people that no one sees. Lowered crime rates in a few cities around the nation— _sharply _lowered.

Wherever they are, we can only hope that the time-tossed heroes are content. They earned that much.

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_(The following is excerpted from "the Amazons: Feminists with Power," by Lois Lane, originally published in the Daily Planet on Sunday 21 April 2013.)_

For more than six hundred years there have been rumors of the Amazons. Those rumors have run the gamut from "witches, worshippers of Satan, dark creatures of the night" to "an all-female terrorist group with an agenda that is against god and nature" to "the women that a woman in trouble hopes like hell have noticed her plight."

The first recorded instance of the Amazons rescuing a woman in trouble came in May of the year 1536; Anne Boleyn, wife of then-King of England Henry VIII, accused of adultery and incest, was imprisoned in the Tower of London, pending execution. Guards posted outside Boleyn's cell on the evening of the eighteenth of May, the night before Boleyn's scheduled execution, reported seeing a light coming from her cell at roughly eight in the evening. On investigating, they saw "two women, dressed in tunic and trousers, and armor over, like men" in Boleyn's cell. One woman was drawing on the wall of the cell with chalk, the other watching the door, while Boleyn herself looked back and forth between the two.

When the guards entered the cell, the woman watching the door produced a short sword and proceeded to fight the two guards— large, well-trained men, by all reports— to a standstill. When the woman drawing on the wall did something that caused the drawing she'd made to "light up with an unnatural light," the woman fighting the two men dropped her sword, caught each man by the collar— and threw them out the door as casually as though the were rats, not big men in heavy armor.

Then Boleyn and the two women stepped into the light… and vanished. All that was left behind was a wooden placard carved with a shield bearing the circle-atop-a-cross female symbol (), a pair of swords crossing behind it, and the words, "She will not die for the convenience of men."

At the same time, all around Great Britain, Boleyn's family members were taken away under similar circumstances, as were the men accused of being her lovers who had denied the charges. (The man who had confessed was left in prison. Interestingly enough, he was pardoned within two months of Boleyn's disappearance… and run over by a cart and killed the day after that.)

Also interesting is the appearance in the south of France, late in the following summer, of a family with the distinctly Irish last name of Bolan. All the members of this Irish family spoke fluent French, most with native fluency… as had all the vanished members of the Boleyn family. The family was well-off, though not rich, and, sometime in the late seventeen hundreds, emigrated to America… where they sold items of jewelry that were later identified as having belonged to Anne Boleyn.

As the science of communication advances, so does the number of people helped by the Amazons. I say people, because the Amazons do not restrict themselves to rescuing women, though women do seem to be their primary focus. They also help children, and, as time marches on, even individual men, though they do seem to maintain their feminist roots.

Women are their prime focus, especially women who are threatened with censure, violence or death for behavior that most of the nations referred to as "first world countries" have deemed is not the business of the courts to regulate. Since the beginning of the nineteen eighties, more than sixty percent of the activity attributed to the Amazons has taken place in countries dominated by the Islamic religion, particularly those that use Sharia, the moral code and religious law of Islam, as the basis for (or entirety of) their judicial code.

An example from earlier this year: Daania Nazari was a twenty-four year-old Iranian widow with two children. Her husband of six years, whom she had loved dearly, died when she was twenty-two, killed in a car accident. Almost two years later, she accepted a proposal of marriage from David Winthrop, a British man who had met her while serving as a diplomatic attaché in Tehran. In mid-January, a month before the wedding, her husband-to-be was called home to London as a part of his duties in Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service. The night before David Winthrop was supposed to leave, they slept together— and were caught by Daania's elder brother.

David Winthrop was ejected from Iran and told never to return, his diplomatic credentials revoked.

Daania Nazari was sentenced to be stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage. Her children were given to her brother and his wife to raise, and she wasn't even allowed to see them after her arrest.

Many countries, including England and the United States, protested the sentence, did the little that they could— but the "Grand Ayatollah" of Iran ignored them altogether.

At three in the morning on the date of Daania Nazari's execution, a group of four women appeared in the jail where she was being held. The Amazons have moved with the times; Daania's guards were taken down with handheld tasers, and the door to her cell was opened with a judicious use of detcord (a slender plastic or rubber tube filled with explosives). Daania refused to leave— until four more Amazons appeared, two of them carrying Daania's children, whom they immediately let go to their mother.

After that, Daania's only words (verified by security video from the jail that was leaked to the internet) were, "I can never thank you enough for my life and the lives of my children, but I must ask… what happens to me now?"

The leader of the Amazon contingent replied immediately, "Your husband-to-be has, with the aid of his family and some friends in high places, managed to move out of Britain, and to a place where even if the Iranian government finds you, they won't be able to reach you."

Daania said nothing, just sobbed and nodded. Seconds later, the Amazons, Daania and her children all disappeared from the cell in a flash of light. This time, they left behind a single sheet of paper, printed with the shield-symbol-and-swords monogram of the Amazons with the words, "Love is not a crime, nor is expressing that love physically. You will not kill this woman for being in love."

Of course the Iranian government calls the Amazons terrorists, in light of their actions in this instance… and many other similar incidents prompted by Iran's adherence to a set of laws that treats women as property.

But there are problems with that interpretation; among all the more than _seventeen hundred incidents_ that have been documented since the Amazons rescued Anne Boleyn from execution, exactly three people have been killed— and two of them were Amazons.

The one non-Amazon casualty in all of their documented rescues was an Afghani soldier that the Amazons caught in the act of raping the prisoner that they came to rescue. (The woman was jailed in 2010 for having been proven to be a lesbian.) The Amazon who killed him may not even have done so deliberately; she simply threw the man off of his victim, and he hit the far wall of her cell headfirst and broke his neck.

One thousand, seven hundred and twenty-two documented actions by the Amazons over almost five hundred years… and one death of a non-Amazon. That is not the death toll of a terrorist group.

The source of the Amazons' power is unknown, though it seems, by virtue of the chalked symbols left behind in their rescue activities, to be some sort of magic— though the symbols come from many "magical systems," not just one. The Kabbalah, voodoo, Norse magic, Egyptian Heku magic, and Greco-Roman magic are all in use, as well as many other systems, too many to list here.

One thing is clear; the magic that the Amazons use to make themselves stronger, faster and tougher than normal humans is not permanent. The two Amazon deaths that have been documented both seemed to result from the empowered women suddenly losing their augmentations.

In April of 2007, the Amazons assaulted a house being run by a child prostitution ring, which was fed by its own human trafficking organization. A dozen Amazons assaulted the house, which stood some forty miles south of Las Vegas, Nevada. They managed to get all of the girls away from the place, despite heavily armed resistance, and most of them escaped. However, one woman discovered a "panic room," already sealed, and she insisted on trying to penetrate it. Several armed men were attempting to drive her away from the panic room's door, firing at her repeatedly with a wide selection of handguns and rifles, but the bullets bounced, and the woman simply continued working at opening the panic room door.

Of course, the police had been called by that point by a passing truck driver and former soldier who recognized, even from a half mile away— of course a building used for such a purpose was set well back from the road— the sound of gunfire, and they arrived in time to see the Amazon's augmentation fail.

"One second, she's got her back to all these men and women with guns, ignoring them as they shoot her repeatedly in the back," said Clark County Sheriff's Deputy Michael Alvarez. "Then we all saw a sort of a pulse of light from her— and she turned around, still bouncing bullets, and looked past the people shooting at her, saw me, and said, 'Deputy, that room very likely contains the records of this organization of human-trafficking child-rapists. It is too late to save me— but _get that room open!'_

"Then she turned around again, and she punched the center of the door to the panic room hard enough that the shockwave knocked down the four crooks closest to her, and it actually dented the door deeply enough to pull all four edges of it in from the frame.

"About a second later, all those crooks started shooting again… and she died pretty much instantly.

"But— and please, put this in your article, Miss Lane— but that last punch, it broke the seal on the door to the panic room. We got in before the timer ran out and the computer erased itself. Using the information we found there, law enforcement agencies across the United States rescued over six hundred children of both genders from forced prostitution.

"We never found out who that woman was— but her death meant something, _accomplished_ something, and I'll never forget her for that."

The other Amazon who died did so just last month, on Tuesday the fifth of March. She was later identified as Irish citizen Deidra Grady, age 32, assistant manager of a small, independent book store in Dublin. She died defending her sister Amazons as they retreated from a trap set up by a group of human traffickers that the Amazons had hit only four months before. The Amazons had acted in December of 2012, rescuing some forty people (nineteen girls under the age of thirteen, twenty-one men between nineteen and twenty-five) from being transported against their wills out of their home nation of Uzbekistan. Some of the traffickers had escaped, rebuilt… and set a trap for the Amazons. They thought they'd be rescuing some thirty people from being sold as sex slaves or slave labor, and instead arrived to find thirty people, all armed with heavy weaponry, intending to kill the Amazons.

They had brought a dozen women along, and might have all escaped— had the thirty men and women waiting for them not been merely one of three such groups, each manning the trap for eight hours at a stretch. When the other sixty arrived, things went from "bad but survivable" to "we're all going to die" very fast.

But Deidra Grady had a contingency ready, and she used it; she produced some sort of force field that surrounded her body, and an area around it sufficient for all of her fellow Amazons to hide behind. Then she simply stayed her ground until all of the others had gone. She tried to go after they did, to follow them, but her force field was too large to pass through the gate. She turned to face her attackers, said, "We will not be fooled again, know that, you bastards"— and either she lowered the force field or it simply failed.

The gunshots that killed her also propelled her back through the gateway… which dropped her in her own flat in Dublin. Neighbors had called the police, had heard gunfire through the gateway to Uzbekistan, and when the police arrived, they found Deidra, still in the urban camouflage that she'd worn to Uzbekistan… and with the printed notice that has become the Amazon "calling card" folded up in her breast pocket.

Eleven other women were seen leaving that apartment before the police arrived… and according to witnesses, even though they all wore stocking masks, you could tell that most of them were crying.

These are the Amazons. Governments where Islamic law is the order of the day consider them a threat, some even calling them terrorists. Criminals who prey on women worry about them interfering.

The rest of us just hope that if we're ever that deeply in trouble… the Amazons hear about it.

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_(From the Star City Sentinel, May 29__th__, 2006)_

Queen family heir missing, presumed dead.

Oliver Queen, eighteen year old heir apparent to the fortune raised by his father, Robert, with his "technology advancement company," Queen Consolidated, has been declared officially missing and is presumed dead after the wreckage of his small yacht, _the Eye of Horus_ washed up on the coast of Chile.

The wreckage of the yacht was found yesterday morning on the shore near a small farm some ten miles south of Constitución, a small city on the coast of the South American nation of Chile.

Queen, a long-time member of the Society for Medieval Recreations, was alone on the sailing yacht, sailing from Star City to New York City, intending to take the Strait of Magellan "because it wasn't made by man." He had emergency supplies, including a radio and GPS system, both of which were found in the wreckage of the _Eye of Horus,_ undamaged and fully functional.

Storms at sea had been recorded, some severe enough to threaten even large cargo ships. Such storms may have been responsible for the sinking of the _Eye of Horus,_ officials say.

The Queen family have not been available for comment.

_(From the Star City Sentinel, March 24__th__, 2013)_

Oliver Queen alive, returning to Star City.

After almost seven years, Oliver Queen, lost heir to the Queen family fortune, presumed dead since an apparent shipwreck in May of 2006, has been found alive.

Queen did not, in fact, require rescue, but sailed a fishing trawler that had been converted to a small cargo ship into the port of Antofagasta, Chile, where he immediately requested that the local police be called. Queen had captured the boat, which had a hold full of pure, uncut cocaine, when the owners landed on the small, unsettled island there he'd been living.

"I think they were just looking to get on land for a while, honestly," Queen said. "Their charts showed that they were going to attempt the sea trip from Santiago to Christchurch, New Zealand, presumably to smuggle the cocaine there. They started from Columbia, so I can see wanting to get on land for a bit. I'm just glad they picked the place they did— I'm ready to go home."

According to Queen, he survived his long exile because of his long association with the Society for Medieval Recreations, an organization that recreates a more pleasant version of life as it was in medieval times. From members of this "SMR," as members often call it, Queen learned various skills that kept him alive.

"The SMR folks taught me to start a fire without a match or lighter when I joined them at thirteen," Queen said. "They taught me to make a simple spear, and the bow and arrows that I eventually made. They taught me to use those things, though I have to admit, it's really different when your life depends on hitting your target— which is running away from you, not blocking your attacks. I almost _starved_ before I figured out how to throw a spear."

When asked how he captured the boat and defeated the six men that he had tied up in the hold, Queen simply shrugged and said, "I know how to hunt. I know how to fight. I know how to sneak up on things a lot more alert than those guys.

"And all those guys know is how to threaten people with guns, which isn't a real useful skill. I snuck up on them, disarmed them, and brought them here. No big thing."

Neither Robert Queen nor his wife of three years, Veronica Sinclair-Queen, have been available for comment.

Moira Queen died of pancreatic cancer in October of 2008, and left her personal fortune in a trust find for her son, to be held until he was found or until he had been declared legally dead for ten years, at which time it would be distributed to various charities.

Oliver Queen will arrive in Star City on Tuesday the 26th of March. The staff of the Sentinel wish him all the best.

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_(From the Smallville Register, December 22__nd__, 2008)_

Small plane receives early Christmas miracle.

A small airplane flying a family of three from Santa Fe, New Mexico to St. Louis, Missouri, was rescued from a crash last night by what seemed to be a genuine miracle.

The plane, a Beechcraft Bonanza 536, suffered serious propeller damage when it struck a bird of some sort while flying near Lyons, and also suffered damage to its windshield. Dennis Adams, a professional stunt man, who was piloting the plane, called in a mayday— and his propeller disintegrated completely before he'd made it very far at all. As the plane dropped below ten thousand feet, it encountered a heavy snowstorm, reducing visibility further.

"Dennis stayed really calm," said Julie Adams, his wife of fifteen years. "But we knew it was bad, because we couldn't see much of anything, and ice was building up on the plane."

"Dad never cusses," said Emily Adams, thirteen. "Not worse than 'damn' or 'hell,' anyway. So when the plane started angling down more and he said the s-word, I figured we were in bad, bad trouble."

According to Adams, an experienced pilot with more than a thousand hours of flight time, they were in trouble.

"I couldn't get the nose up to glide her in, and I couldn't see to pick a spot to land her if I had been able to get the nose up," Adams said. "I thought we were all going to die."

They were, according to the plane's altimeter, around twelve hundred feet up and stuck in a steep dive, when all three passengers felt a thump, as though they'd bumped something in the air pretty hard. Then the plane's dive began to level out, not rapidly enough to cause the people inside any discomfort, but rapidly enough that they felt some change in acceleration.

"The controls weren't responding, not really, but we leveled out and slowed down," Adams said. "We flew along straight and level for two or three minutes, then we touched down… in the middle of what we found out pretty soon was Lincoln Drive in Smallville, Kansas. In fact, we were less than a hundred feet from the front of the Schuster County Sheriff's Office."

When asked if there was any sign of help from an outside source, Adams hesitated for a second, then said, "I couldn't see much, but I swear, I saw a rooster tail in the falling snow in front of us right after we landed. Like something about the size of a person had flown away at a speed too fast to see, but had still disturbed the snow.

"I don't know what happened— I'm just glad to be alive, and that my family's okay."

Local farmer Jonathan Kent, in town to wait out the storm before manning a county snowplow, saw the landing from inside Siegel's Restaurant, where he and his daughter, home from Kansas State University for Christmas vacation, were having coffee.

"The plane just… glided in, sort of, except it was going too slow to be airborne," Kent said. "I didn't seen anything under the plane, but then it was dark and snowing heavily.

"I figure that it was one of those Justice Society superheroes, they're still out there, and something sure saved those people."

"I missed the whole thing," Clarissa Kent lamented. "Only really exciting thing to happen in Smallville in years, and I was in the restroom."

The Adams family will be staying in the Smallville Bed and Breakfast until their plane can be taken to Salina Regional Airport for repairs.

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_(From the Gotham Gossip, December 26__th__, 2008)_

Gotham's 'bad boy' Bruce Wayne stops fleeing Christmas Eve criminals.

Bruce Wayne, 'bad boy' son of Doctor Thomas Wayne and New Jersey State Representative Mary Wayne, managed to save Christmas for approximately two thousand orphaned and abandoned children on Christmas Eve by virtue of crashing his two million dollar sports car.

As is their habit, the elder Waynes purchased a new toy for each child in Gotham City's orphanages and group homes, and set them up for delivery on Christmas Eve. This year's crop of toys included nearly one thousand of the new Sontendo handheld video game system, the DreamScreen. The Wayne's bought their supply of the hottest Christmas item this year directly from the manufacturer, and thus had plenty of them when stores across the nation have been out for weeks. New, still-in-the-box DreamScreens were being sold on EBay and other auction sites for as much as $2500, roughly twenty-five times the toy's suggested retail price.

Sanderson "Sandy" Burns, an employee of the Algernon Abernathy Memorial Home for Orphaned Children, found out about the storehouse full of these insanely valuable toys, and plotted with his girlfriend's brother, convicted strong-arm robber Dale Fuller, to steal the toys before they were delivered late on Christmas Eve.

The two aspiring criminals successfully stole the large cargo truck full of toys from the warehouse where the toys had been stored, hospitalizing the original drivers. Lucius Fox, a long-time employee of Wayne Enterprises, and Director of Acquisitions for the company, was hospitalized with a concussion. His companion, Wayne family butler Alfred Pennyworth, was treated for a broken arm, cracked ribs, and a concussion.

Some four blocks from the warehouse, the truck was passing through the intersection of Kane Boulevard and Rucka Road when a 2008 Lamborghini Reventón (one of only twenty of the model sold to the public) entered the intersection at some unknown-but-excessive speed, seemingly destined for a nose-to-side collision with the truck's cab.

Burns, who was driving the truck, tried to avoid the collision, but Bruce Wayne was going much too fast. Somehow, despite the fact that Wayne was moving at speeds estimated by accident investigators to be in excess of ninety mile an hour, the Gotham City bad boy managed to spin the car so that the passenger's side broadsided the truck's driver's side.

"That he avoided hitting that truck's cab nose-on— which probably would've killed him, and never mind the incredible safety features Lamborghini put in the Reventón— is proof that either Bruce Wayne needs to be driving Gran Prix races, or he's lucky enough for ten ordinary people," said Gotham PD Traffic Investigator Chuck Aparo. "And I've never heard of Bruce Wayne being a great driver."

When asked about the events, Bruce just smiled his best "aw, shucks" smile and said, "I got lucky, sure. I was hurrying to get to the warehouse— I was late, and I didn't want Lucius and Alfred to leave without me— and when I saw that truck, I thought "oh, [unprintable], I'm about to hit Alfred and Lucius, Mom and Dad will kill me," and jerked the wheel trying to miss them.

"Guess it all worked out. The crooks are going to jail when they get out of the hospital, and Mom and Dad forgave me as a Christmas present."

When asked if he didn't feel bad about largely destroying a two million dollar car, Wayne produced a different, more appealing smile and said, "Hey, that two million dollar car— and the Gotham PD being incredibly understanding and letting us take the toys, going with just pictures and video for evidence— saved Christmas for a lot of underprivileged kids. I'm gonna call that a win."

When asked about his participation in the charity function, Wayne said, "Oh, I've helped every year since I was twelve. When I was eight, something happened that could very easily have left _me_ an orphan, so I try to pay back fate by helping out with the Christmas stuff for the orphans."

Wayne then excused himself and started moving toys from the wrecked truck to the new one that had been driven there by his father.

It seems that there might be a bit of good boy in the nation's most famous bad boy after all….


	3. Outfitting

Outfitting

_Wednesday 11 September 2013_

"Bruce, your father's ill," Mary Wayne said into her cell phone. "It's serious. Can you please come home? For a while?"

"What's wrong with him, Mom?" Bruce Wayne asked, his voice crackling with static, despite the five thousand dollar satellite phone he was using. "No, never mind— I'm on my way. It'll take about two days to get to where I can get a plane home, though— I'll see you Saturday, okay? Or… Mom, do I need to get there faster? If so, you can probably hire a helicopter to come and pick me up."

"It's not… Saturday will be fine, Bruce." Mary took a deep breath, then said, "Do I even want to know where you are, son?"

"Tibet," Bruce said. "A monastery in the mountains. Learning to combine all the other physical skills I've learned, plus some really incredible meditation techniques. I was leaving next Monday anyway, so this isn't even a big deal.

"I'll see you Saturday… probably late morning, with time zone shuffling and such. Hug Dad for me, okay, Mom?"

"I will," Mary said. "See you soon, Bruce."

_Saturday 14 September 2013_

"Mom," Bruce said, and folded his mother into a hug as Alfred went past them with some of Bruce's bags. "It's good to be home, Mom."

"Thanks for coming home so quickly," Mary answered. She looked her son over carefully. "My god, you look… I don't think the mustache and beard really suit you, dear. You look rather… wicked."

"I know," Bruce said, stroking the goatee and mustache he'd cultivated while traveling in the Orient. "You'd be amazed at how much it helps me avoid being recognized, though, Mom.

"So is Dad in the hospital, or—"

"He's not hospitalized," Mary said. "Not right now, anyway. He's in his study, and… well, son, he wanted to talk to you about this himself. Go on up, I'll join the two of you after a while."

Bruce didn't like the undercurrent of fear in his mother's voice, nor the qualifier of "not right now, anyway," but he let it go— if his father wanted to tell him about whatever was wrong, Bruce could respect that. "All right, Mom.

"Oh, hey— Alfred, put that long bag in my room and don't unpack it, please. There are some weapons in there, I'll put them in the gym later."

"Of course, Master Bruce," the butler smiled and said, "At least this time, there's nothing alive in your luggage. I hope."

"Honestly, Alfred, I didn't pack the scorpion, he just crawled in there," Bruce said, rolling his eyes.

"One can hope that there are no stowaway abominable snowmen in your bags, then, given where you've most recently been," Alfred said, his tone light. "Go and speak to your father, Master Bruce, I shall unpack your things and put the bag with weapons in it in the gymnasium for you, though I shall leave it for you to unpack."

Bruce went to the stairs and up them three at a time, worry about his father making him hurry. He found his father's study on the third floor, knocked, and entered when Thomas Wayne called "Come in."

At fifty-three, Thomas Wayne was in excellent shape for a man of thirty. He still had the build of a professional athlete, and his hair, though it had gone iron gray, was still thick and healthy-looking. The only physical sign of any ailment was a bit of tension around the eyes and mouth, and shadows under his eyes that spoke of restless sleep.

"Bruce, it's good to see you, son," he said, stepping out from behind his desk and hugging his son fiercely. "Thanks for cutting your stay in Tibet short by a few days."

"That's no big deal, Dad," Bruce said. "Master Kun said I was ready to leave, that I'd accomplished everything I set out to learn. I was just waiting for a graduation ceremony, really."

"And you've had lots of those already," Thomas said. He sat down in an armchair in the corner of the study set up for conversation, motioned Bruce to the chair opposite. "Though darned few in your own name." He smiled at Bruce and said, "In fact, the Social Sciences division at the University of Maryland has awarded 'Thomas Kane'— your mother and I like that pseudonym, thank you, son— his doctorate in Criminal Psychology." He raised an eyebrow. "How did you arrange to defend your dissertation while out of the country, Bruce?"

"Not too hard," Bruce said. "Thomas Kane had an established history of health problems, including a rare-but-treatable form of asthma that requires an extremely dry climate for patient comfort. Officially, I was at a clinic in Phoenix. I'm good enough on a computer that there's no way the dissertation committee could tell that I was actually in Tibet during that video conference."

Thomas chuckled, nodded, and said, "Very good, Bruce.

"Now, I'm sorry to have delayed telling you what I know you need to hear— but I wanted to know how you pulled off your… what is it, your fourth doctorate?"

"Yes, sir, fourth one," Bruce agreed. "Dad… what's wrong?"

"Bruce, I have intestinal cancer," Thomas said. He raised a hand before Bruce could do more than make a sound of shock and hurt, and said, "It was caught very early, and my chances of full recovery are better than seventy percent, son, but… well, it is cancer. Which means it's unpredictable."

"Yes," Bruce said, and he took a deep, shaky breath. "Yes, it is.

"Is there anything that I can do to help?"

"Actually… yes," Thomas Wayne said. He leaned forward and met his son's eyes squarely. "Bruce, you haven't actually said anything about it in years, but the education you've so… relentlessly pursued, the anonymity you've so painstakingly arranged during that pursuit, the physical skills you've worked at, even the, ah, extralegal pursuits that your mother and I weren't supposed to know about— oh, get that panicked look off of your face, son, we knew that you weren't actually intending to use those skills to become a criminal.

"But all of those things… Bruce, do you still intend to… well, to fight crime? Anonymously, from outside the law?"

Bruce hesitated only for a moment, then said, "Yes, sir. I know, vigilante justice isn't often a good idea, but Dad, I've thought about it, and acting outside the law… I can do a _kind_ of good that the police _can't_. I'd need to be anonymous, too, to avoid prosecution, or the criminals that I go after being able to target me— or you and Mom— in retaliation.

"But if you need me to put that aside, or even give it up—"

"No, no," Thomas said, raising his hands. "Bruce, I remember that night, as clearly as… well, as clearly as I remember the night you were born, son. And I remember it with pleasure.

"Son, the changes in you since that man saved us… you were never a bad boy, but after that night, you were even better than you were before. You've worked harder than anyone I've ever seen to learn everything that you thought even _might_ help you become like the man who very probably saved our lives that night, and you've grown into the kind of man that any parent would be proud of."

"Even with my… uh, rather less appealing 'public face,' Dad?" Bruce asked.

"Oh, the bad boy act was… a pain, on occasion, yes," Thomas said. He smirked a little, then said, "And I _would_ love to know how you convinced a breathalyzer that you were drunk when I know you were stone-cold sober, I admit, but son… your mother and I have always understood the act, both that it is an act, and why you wear that 'bad boy' façade.

"Which brings us to why we asked that you come home now, Bruce." Thomas Wayne took a deep breath and asked softly, "Son, do you still intend to be a… costumed hero? To be like the man who captured Joe Chill that night… almost seventeen years ago, now?"

"Very much so, sir," Bruce said, his voice even.

"How close are you to ready?"

"Very close, actually, sir." Bruce took a deep breath. "The skills… I'm as ready as I can be on that front, Dad. I have a ridiculous number of black belts and more knowledge in arts where nobody awards a belt, they just tell you you're ready. I know everything I can learn about the criminal mind, and thanks to some fake IDs, I've even got practical experience with crime scene technology and processing and actual police detective work. I've got a lot of… odd equipment, which is why I've put such a ding in the family fortune—"

"I knew you weren't actually wrecking that many cars, or having to settle out of court for that many 'assaults,' Bruce," Thomas said with a grin. "I assumed the money was going towards preparation for your chosen vocation, son.

"Bruce, what's left to do? Before you're fully ready, I mean?"

"I need to scout out the city," Bruce said immediately. "Quietly, as a crook. I can do it— I've got the disguise skills, a persona already inserted in the various criminal databases, and I've used the persona overseas, so the crooks can check up on it.

"Past that, I need a bit of technology that's being elusive."

"What's that?" Thomas asked.

"Armor that isn't movement-restrictive," Bruce answered. "Dad, I can fight like… well, I'm probably the fourth or fifth best fighter on the planet, but that's only if I'm unencumbered by armor, which is a bad idea, because I'm not bulletproof. It's a problem that… well, I'm not sure how to beat it, short of stealing some prototype stuff, and that would be both dangerously risky and… kind of distasteful."

Thomas Wayne smiled at his son and said, "Well, son, I'm glad you feel that way— and I might be able to help."

He stood, motioned Bruce to follow him, and left the room. On the second floor, he went into the room that was Bruce's study, a smaller, book-lined room adjoining the younger man's bedroom. Here, he went to a bookshelf on one wall and pointed at a hardback book on the top shelf. "There," he said to his son. "That one."

Bruce looked up— the bottom of the shelf was at eye level— and laughed. _"The Complete Zorro Stories of Johnston McCulley,"_ he read. "Excellent, I'll start it toni—"

He'd put his hand on the top of the book and pulled it out— or tried to. When the book tilted to about thirty degrees, something made a soft "click"— and the shelf opened out slightly, like a door.

"What the heck?" Bruce said.

"Come on, son," Thomas said, and he swung the shelf out wide, revealing a short hallway behind it. The hall ended at a small elevator— big enough for two people comfortably, but a third would've been crowding it.

"What the heck?" Bruce said as the elevator started downward rather rapidly. "Dad, where'd this come from?"

"The passage has been here since the place was built," Thomas said. "Remember, our first wealthy ancestor was not exactly a law-abiding citizen Bruce. He was a smuggler. The house has several secret passages, and there's a rather extensive cave underneath."

"A cave?" Bruce asked, growing interested. "How extensive?"

"Take a look," Thomas Wayne said— and the elevator doors opened.

The cave was huge, at least the size of a football field… and parts of it had been made into a workspace for a crime-fighter.

A huge bank of networked computers sat in a Plexiglas room near one edge, with a bank of surprisingly quiet air conditioners just outside the enclosure to keep them cool and dry— the cave wasn't damp, exactly, but it wasn't arid, either. Near that was a computer workstation, next to that a set of long tables that were covered in equipment that Bruce recognized as a complete set of crime lab equipment. Past that….

"Uh, Dad," Bruce said slowly, "first, I have got to say 'thank you!' But then I have to ask two things; how careful were you in covering your tracks when you bought all this stuff and did all this, and… what the hell kind of car is that?"

The car in question sat maybe forty-five yards from the other equipment, and had a spotlight all to itself. To Bruce, it looked like someone who designed cars for use in the Indianapolis 500 race had been asked to design an off-road military vehicle— and keep it just as fast and maneuverable as a race car. It was low-slung and aerodynamic, but also appeared to be armored, and it had oversized tires that made it… not quite as low-slung as it initially seemed. The driver's compartment sat near the front, and had heavily tinted glass.

"That," Thomas Wayne said with some satisfaction, "is what happens when you ask a woman who is horribly frustrated by her inability to break into automotive design for racing cars— simply _because _she's a woman— to design a pursuit vehicle that's also armored and capable of off-road pursuit. That is, if you tell her that, and that if she delivers you'll make her head of design for the racing team you're about to start up— and follow through. Team Wayne is probably going to start racing the American Championship Car circuit next year. I hired the man who taught you to drive as our primary driver, and I think we may make quite a splash, son.

"The car cost… well, a good deal more than the Lamborghini that you used to stop the robbery a few years ago, Bruce, and I spent ten times that much in making sure I had enough spare parts to literally build five more from scratch.

"As for how careful I've been about this… well, I had access to funds that were never, ever reported, Bruce, funds in accounts that your grandfather and his father and grandfather had been hiding for a long time. Dad never told me about the accounts, just left a letter to be presented to me when he died telling me about them. I was going to give the money away, or report it— and then I remembered your ambition, and it occurred to me that untraceable funds? Probably a good idea.

"The work down here and on the elevator… illegal immigrants did all the work on the cave, bossed by Alfred in a scarily convincing disguise as a redneck jerk. They were brought to work in vehicles that they couldn't see out of after being scanned for cell phones or other electronic devices, taken out the same way… and driven around in circles for a bit both ways. And Alfred 'slipped' once when talking to his supervisor— me, in makeup that made me look older and Hispanic— and complained about the drive back-and-forth between Metropolis and Gotham.

"In other words, son… it's just possible that I inherited a bit of criminal know how from that smuggler ancestor of ours."

Bruce laughed and said, "I think you did, yes, sir."

"There's one more thing to show you," Thomas said, and led Bruce to a tall, heavily-constructed metal cabinet that stood just a few feet to one side of the elevator. He nodded at the keypad on the front and said, "The combination is eight digits long, son. I'll bet you can figure it out with a little thought."

Bruce frowned for a moment, then his eyes lit up, and he said, "Oh. Yes, of course." He stepped forward and pressed one-zero-zero-four-one-nine-nine-six into the keypad— the slash-notation equivalent of October fourth, 1996, the date his determination to become a hero had been born.

The double doors of cabinet opened slightly, and Bruce pushed them open wide.

There hung a two-tone gray costume, medium-dark gray for the length of it, with not-quite-black gloves, boots, cape and cowl. The cowl had fairly tall, sharp protrusions on the top, like ears, and the cape had a scalloped bottom, leaving it shaped, if spread, like stylized bat wings.

On the chest, in that same not-quite-black, was a large, stylized bat.

"Oh, man," Bruce said, staring at the costume in delight. "That's… it's just like _his_ costume, Dad. That's… Dad, thank you!"

"You're welcome, Bruce," Thomas said. "And so you know… that costume is bullet-resistant all over, and bullet-proof over the head, neck, and torso. The material is… well, let's say that it's not practical for anyone but a filthy rich person to use it, though I've got people working on making it less expensive, so that we can give it to police and the military at a reasonable cost."

"Oh. Oh, man. Dad, I can't thank—"

"You can thank me, Bruce," Thomas said quietly. He took a deep breath. "Son, the cancer is treatable, and the odds are in my favor, but… I don't want to take chances. I don't want to… to wait for certain things. Your mother's taking a leave from Congress, and we're going to do some things we've always wanted to, just… just in case.

"But, Bruce, one of the things I want— just in case, son— is to see you start your career as a hero.

"You say you need time to scout out Gotham, to get a feel for things, and no matter what, I've got that sort of time. Do that, Bruce, and go over the equipment that we've bought between us— the belt on the left door, there, the one with the insane number of pouches, it's filled with a lot of things I thought would be useful or necessary, we'll go over it together.

"Son, I want to see the newspaper that says 'costumed hero saves lives,' or 'stops crime,' or whatever it is you do first. I want to see that before I die, and while I'm not planning on leaving, while I don't feel like I'm in danger of dying… I will not take chances."

"Dad," Bruce Wayne said, his eyes serious, but still gleaming with excitement, "you have yourself a deal.

"Listen, Alfred, he knows all about this, right?"

"Of course, son," Thomas agreed. "He's helped us both out with things down the years."

"Right, of course, sorry," Bruce said, shaking his head. "I'm just… excited, because I'm closer to ready than I even imagined.

"Can I borrow him after dinner? The level of disguise I want to use for my scouting trips is a lot easier to apply with four hands, and he trained me, partly, so I know he can help."

"Of course, son," Thomas said, and he smiled. "Let's go upstairs, your mother wants to be in on this, too, though I think her idea is more to instill some common sense and caution into the mix."

They rode the elevator back up, found Mary Wayne, and the three of them and Alfred Pennyworth spent the day discussing what needed to be done before Bruce Wayne made his debut as Batman.

**88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888**

_Wednesday 18 September 2013_

Martha Kent glanced at the caller ID on the kitchen phone, saw her daughter's name and picked up with a "Hello, sweetheart."

"Hi, Mom," Clarissa said, and her voice bubbled with laughter and good cheer. "Hey, have you started dinner yet?"

"Not yet, no," Martha said. "Why do you ask, honey?"

"If I bring steaks and stuff, will you or Dad grill them?" Clarissa asked.

"If you bring steaks, darn right we will," Martha said. "What's the occasion, Clarissa?"

"Tell you when I get there," Clarissa said. "Let me see… okay, with the flight time for a path avoiding satellite notice, give me… fifteen minutes to do the shopping and get there."

"All right, dear," Martha said. "Whatever this is, it's obviously good news, so I'm not going to argue."

"See you soon," Clarissa said, and hung up.

Martha Kent said goodbye, hung up, and went to tell her husband that Clarissa was coming for dinner, and bringing steaks.

When Clarissa arrived fourteen minutes after hanging up, she flew in at a speed that left her invisible for all practical purposes, landed behind the house, and walked around front to find her parents relaxing on the big front porch. The gas grill was going at the far end, where the breeze would take the heat away from the house, and her parents sat several feet off.

Clarissa hugged her parents, let her father take the grocery bag that contained three big Porterhouse steaks, three big potatoes, some rolls and a six pack of really good beer, and said, "Guess who starts working the City Desk at _the Daily Planet_ tomorrow morning!"

Jonathan Kent set the bag down, picked up his daughter and swung her around while hugging her, laughing all the time. When he set her down, Martha hugged her, and they both congratulated her.

"Just barely twenty-five and assigned to the City Desk on the nation's second biggest paper!" Jonathan said, shaking his head in amazement. "Clarissa, that's wonderful."

"Very wonderful," Martha agreed, getting a beer for each of them an putting the rest in the cooler beside her chair to go with the others already sitting there. "I thought Mr. White wasn't going to make a decision between you and that Lane woman until Monday."

"He wasn't," Clarissa said, smiling. "And he didn't actually have to, turns out.

"Lois Lane is good. I haven't met her, but I've read her stuff." Clarissa clinked her bottle against those of her parents, and they all sipped beer. "She does mostly political stuff, from local to international, she's that good, they have her cover international politics, and she's only a little older than me. But she's like me in that she loves Metropolis, wants to focus more on the city. Perry said that my crime reporting was just as good as her political stuff, and he'd have to boot the decision upstairs.

"Well, Mr. Scott— Alan Scott, the paper's owner, he bought it after being forced out of the Gotham Gazette— he takes a very hands-on approach, so when Perry said he couldn't honestly make a decision, Mr. Scott came to Metropolis and interviewed us both." Clarissa smiled, revealing dimples that made her look about sixteen. "He said some very nice things about my investigation into that Luther wretch, actually credited me  
with helping the FBI nail the guy—"

"Credit you deserve, Clarissa Kent," Martha said firmly.

"I guess, but they'd have gotten him," Clarissa said, blushing a little. "It might have taken a little longer is all.

"Anyway, after interviewing us both, Mr. Scott told Perry that he was expanding the City Desk's operating budget by forty-two thousand dollars a year— so that he could promote us _both."_

"That's a pretty good raise, too," Jonathan said. "Still not sure it's enough to live on— not in Metropolis."

"It's plenty, Dad," Clarissa assured him. "That's a twenty percent raise, and I don't have a lot of complicated tastes or needs."

"So long as you're comfortable," Martha said, waving a dismissive hand, "that's all that matters.

"So how is the flip side of your life going, dear?"

Clarissa frowned a little. "It's going well, I guess— but it's getting harder, Mom. I mean— I can move so fast that cameras can't get a good shot of me, sure, but… but sometimes, moving that fast while saving somebody from some disaster, or crime, or whatever, that's dangerous. To the person I'm trying to save, I mean, not to me."

"I can see where that would be a problem," Jonathan said, putting the steaks on the grill. "I mean, if you're moving too fast for a camera to see you, and your body's so tough that we haven't found anything that can actually hurt you, then tackling someone at those speeds would just as likely kill them, not save them."

"Yes," Clarissa said. "At the same time, though… I can't just ignore it. If I see someone in serious danger… I have to help."

"We sure did raise you right," Martha said, squeezing her daughter's hand.

"Yeah, I think we did," Jonathan said, sitting down next to his wife. "Any thoughts on how to fix the problem, Clarissa?"

"Yes," Clarissa said, and she took a paperback book out of her back pocket, tossed it to her father. "They had the right idea, Dad."

Jonathan Kent looked at the old photo on the cover of _The Golden Age: A History of the All-Star Squadron, _a photo of more than fifty of the members of the premier super-team of World War II, the most that had ever been assembled at once. "A costume?" he asked. Then he answered himself. "A costume. Yeah, that's actually not a terrible idea. Hell, that's a good idea."

"What sort of a costume did you have in mind, dear?" Martha Kent asked.

"Well, something that's tight," Clarissa said. "The flapping of loose cloth when I fly is maddening sometimes, and if I'm going below Mach, the bad guys could hear me coming. Besides, nothing skintight ever seems to rip on me, you noticed that a long time ago, Mom."

"Good thought, yes," Martha agreed. Then she grinned wickedly and added, "Besides, the way you're built, put you in something skintight and the bad guys will be too busy drooling to fight back."

"Mom!" Clarissa protested, blushing. "Come off it, that's—"

"Clarissa, you're gorgeous," Martha said firmly. "I know how many dates you turned down in high school as well as how many you accepted, you were in the homecoming court every year, queen your senior year. And don't you think I remember that modeling agent who came around… was it three times or four in the summer between senior year of high school and freshman year of college?"

"Four," Jonathan said helpfully. "Remember, he came back after you specifically told him not to, Martha, and boy, did he learn better than to ignore you." Jonathan snickered. "A five gallon bucket of tomato goop from you making tomato juice and sauce for canning, all over the damned fool. Worth listening to him scream just to see his face."

"So, yes, Clarissa, when you show up wearing a skintight costume, there will be some drooling going on," Martha said smugly. "And some glaring from those who are jealous.

"Skintight. It makes sense. Any thoughts on a design?"

"And on what you're going to call yourself?" Jonathan asked. "Need a good hero name, Clarissa, or the press will slap you with something awful. Do you really want to be… I don't know, 'Superwoman?' Or— and even worse— 'Mighty Maiden?'

"Damn, that's horrifying, and _I_ thought of it."

"I have an idea, actually," Martha said. "You want something that conveys strength, or toughness, and still sounds… well, feminine, Clarissa? Or would you rather go with a gender-neutral thing?"

"I am a woman," Clarissa said. "A feminine codename is fine, so long as it isn't one of those Dad thought up, he's right, those are just… wrong."

"All right, then," Martha said, smiling. "How about 'Diamond' for a superhero name?"

"Oh, that's good," Jonathan said, nodding. "Clarissa, what do you think? You'll be the one using it?"

"I think," Clarissa said with a smile, "that we need to come up with a costume for Diamond, the first new superhero in… what, sixty years or more?"

"Let me get my sketchpad," Martha said. "I can draw up your ideas, and we can get an idea what works before we start putting it together— that way, we waste less time and less material."

"Food first," Clarissa said. "The smell is making me crazy."

They ate, cleaned up, then started working on the design for Clarissa's costume. By the time she left at nine that evening— ten, in Metropolis— they had a solid design, and Clarissa had a plan for getting everything she needed.

"Supersonic flight makes it a lot less likely that anyone will remember me buying anything," she said as she hugged her parents. "I can buy everything— and spares of everything— in different places around the world."

"Good thinking," Jonathan said. "Just remember to wear some sort of… something as a disguise when you do the buying, just in case."

"I will," Clarissa agreed. "Thanks Mom, Dad. Love you guys."

"We love you, too," Martha said, hugging her. "We'll watch the news, honey."

"Congratulations again on the promotion," Jonathan said as Clarissa kissed his cheek. "And thanks for the steaks."

Clarissa scanned the skies carefully, planned her route to avoid being seen by surveillance satellites, waited a few beats for the right moment to start, then waved to her parents— and vanished with a sudden sharp gust of wind.

Clarissa Kent didn't need more than about two or three hours of sleep a night (and that much only for healthy, dreaming sleep), so she decided to start her costume-shopping that night. She wore loose clothes to disguise her figure, oversized glasses and a floppy hat to disguise her face a little.

Clarissa started her shopping online, from a public terminal in a library in a small town in Indiana that had a skylight that wasn't locked. She was able to look up all the things she needed there in less than an hour. She actually bought the first bit at a wig shop in Rio de Janeiro, one that was open all hours, and finished in a store in Amsterdam that left her blushing the whole time that she was inside it.

"Okay," she said as she flew into her third floor apartment on Clinton Street in Metropolis. "Now to put everything together. I sure am glad Dad taught me to sew when he taught Mom."

She thought about things a bit while she worked, then went out to an all-night drugstore and checked something out at the display rack of reading glasses. Her idea worked, and the next morning, before going to _the Daily Planet,_ she swung by a Goodwill store and asked if they had any prescription glasses. They did, and she chose a pair with a powerful prescription, assured the lady that sold them to her that she'd get her eyes examined to make sure these wouldn't hurt her vision, and went to a glasses place nearby that did eyeglasses in an hour. There, she picked a pair of angular-looking fashion frames in bright red and had the store make her a set of those in the same prescription as the ones she'd bought at Goodwill.

She arrived at _the Planet_ five minutes before she was due, found her new desk, and wasn't surprise to see Perry White, the editor of the paper, waiting there.

"Clarissa, good to see you," Perry said, shaking her hand. "When did you start wearing glasses, young lady?"

"Pretty much today," she said. "I've needed them for a while, honestly, but I don't drive, so I let it wait for a while. Now… with a raise, I can certainly afford them."

"As much as they magnify your eyes, I'd say that you should have gotten them a long time ago," Perry scolded. "Well, you have optical insurance, now— comes with the promotion— so your next pair will be free, so long as you wait more than six months to get them updated."

Clarissa agreed with him and tried not to grin. She had a visual range well beyond that of any normal human, and by turning on her microscopic vision at an insignificant amount and leaving it on, she countered the glasses prescription out perfectly, and actually seemed to need them. The trick was already working without her thinking about it at all, and no one would associate visibly-myopic Clarissa with Diamond, especially not since Clarissa dressed in loose, comfortable and professional clothes at work. Add in the other touches she and her parents had come up with, and she was sure that her secret would be safe— which would keep her friends and family safe.

"Ah, there's our other new reporter," Perry said, and waved at someone. "Over here, Lois— you're just in time to meet the lady who was your competition before Mr. Scott ponied up the funds to promote you both."

A woman nearly as tall as Clarissa's own five-nine came over, shook Perry's hand, then turned to Clarissa when the editor introduced them and shook her hand.

"Lois Lane, this is Clarissa Kent," Perry said. "Lois is an Army brat and a near-Olympian— missed the swimming team by a tenth of a second, way I hear it— as well as an excellent reporter with a sharp eye for politics. Lois is the one who did that in-depth look at the Amazons last spring, managed to get an actual, evidence-based count on their actions since their first appearance.

"Clarissa is a Kansas girl, was editor of her high school paper for two years, editor of the Kansas State Collegian for two more, could've been for a third, but decided to focused on getting her Masters in Journalism faster instead. She's the one who broke the Alexander Luther story, helped the FBI track that son of a— that monster down.

"You two will probably end up working together sooner or later, so I hope you get along."

Lois, a slender, fit woman with long brown hair, a very pretty face, and hazel eyes, grinned. "I don't see any problems with that, Chief— if she'll help me with some of my investigative stuff, I'll gladly share a byline with her. Or even dinner."

Clarissa blushed, and stammered, "Oh, uh, I'm sure… I mean, sure, if you need something investigated, I can… well, I'm sure you're a good investigator, too, with the whole Amazon thing, and… yes, of course."

Perry looked at Clarissa a little oddly, but Lois just chuckled a little and said, "Loosen up, Clarissa. Kansas is a long way away, and you're a damned good reporter. I know we'll get along.

"I was in Kansas for a while myself when I was a freshman in high school— Fort Leavenworth. Is that anywhere near where you lived?"

"No, not really," Clarissa admitted, her blush fading and her demeanor leveling out some. "I'm from Smallville, which is west and a little south of —"

"Oh, hey, an anomaly zone," Lane said, sitting at her desk across from Clarissa's. "I think you have a member of the Justice Society living out there, probably Johnny Quick, maybe the Flash or Green Lantern. Could even be Starman, though I'd give that one low odds."

"What… makes you say that?" Clarissa asked, sitting down herself. A box of stuff from her old desk was in the foot well, and she picked it up and started distributing her things as Lois answered.

"My research on the Amazon article," Lois said. "I turned up a few statistical anomalies of the sort that suggest a superhero in the area. Miraculous saves, impossible rescues, no one ever seeing the person doing the work… says super-speed to me. Add in that some of it was mid-air rescues— a skydiving accident, a plane accident, and a helicopter crash— and that leads me to think of Johnny Quick, who was super-fast and could fly, though I suppose the Flash could've learned. Green Lantern and Starman because they both can fly, and can both do so at scary speeds.

"Actually, though, no one fits all the needed powers— super-strength, super-speed, flight— with the possible exception of Starman, who could manipulate gravity, simulating super-strength.

"Doesn't matter— whoever it is, they save lives. If they want to remain anonymous, that's their right."

Clarissa smiled, nodded, and said, "Yes, I think you're right.

"Hey, Lois, do you know anything about Councilman Ordway? I've got a lead on a corruption story involving the Parks and Recreation department, and that's his big focus, isn't it?"

"Ordway?" Lane said, looking thoughtful. "Pretty sure he's a straight arrow, Clarissa…. Now, his assistant, Giffen? That guy's a louse, and he's got ambitions…."

Clarissa smiled, nodded, and started taking notes.

**88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888**

_Friday 20 September 2013_

Oliver Queen looked again at GPS tracker in his hand, thought about the note that he'd found pushed under his door two days before, shook his head, and sighed.

_The dreams will stop if you go to these coordinates_— followed by latitude and longitude that led him to a patch of woods southeast of Danvers, Illinois. Of course, he'd been trespassing to get that far, and the owner— a nice enough guy, but very stubborn— had insisted that Oliver leave, and not even a hefty bribe could change his mind.

_That's fine,_ Oliver thought as he crept through the woods a few minutes before midnight. _I don't mind sneaking around, and the people don't even have a dog, so it's no hassle_.

Of course, he wasn't sure what he was looking for. But if it stopped the damned dreams, he'd try anything.

The dreams had started not long after his eighteenth birthday. Always the same thing— a man chasing Ollie and a woman that Ollie knew he loved, though he never saw her face, or more than a dim silhouette of her form. They always got caught, and the dream always ended with a dagger plunging at the woman's chest and Oliver shouting himself awake. Egyptian symbolism ran through the dreams steadily, too— walls with hieroglyphs on them, himself dressed in Egyptian finery and with skin that said he was a native of the area on the parts of his dream-self that he could see.

That had been the real purpose of his attempted sailing trip. He'd been going to firm up his pretty-decent sailing skills on the trip from Star City to the Strait of Magellan— then sail to Egypt from there, once he felt more sure of his ability to do it and make it in one piece. Then came the storm, the wreck, and his seven-year exile on that damned island. The dream had come less often for those seven years, that had been the only really good thing about the time he spent in exile.

_I came home and they went right back to Maximum Insomnia,_ he thought as he moved stealthily into the woods, GPS tracker in his hand, glancing back and forth between it and the ground before him. _And Dad's giving me enough grief about wanting me to stay at home for a while without me giving him the added cause of insomnia and nightmares so bad I shout us all awake every night_.

_And if I don't get out of there pretty soon, I'm gonna say something to that _thing_ he married that… well, I won't regret saying it to the slimy little bitch, but I'll hate how it makes Dad feel._

_And… here I am. Nothing but trees, and—_

"Don't move," said a woman's voice, and Oliver felt something round and metallic against the back of his neck.

He didn't think, he just reacted as years of training and more years of living in the wild had taught him. He dropped, swept the woman's feet out from under her, came up and drew an arrow, nocked and started to draw—

— and his feet went out from under him as one of her ankles hooked in front of his, her other leg went behind his knee, and she rolled. Oliver dropped his bow and arrow, kept rolling, and came up with a hunting knife in his hand.

"Okay, lady," he growled. "I don't know why you brought me out here, but I'm going to find out. You want to do it the hard way, I'm game."

"I didn't bring you out here," the woman said— Oliver could tell very little about her, past that she might have been a little over average height, five-six or so, and she was smart enough to wear camouflage gear. And that she'd held what he thought was a pen cap to his neck to simulate a gun barrel, she had no gun. She glared at him and added "You're the one leaving cryptic notes, jackass!"

Oliver frowned, then straightened out of his combat-ready crouch and slowly, carefully sheathed his knife. "Okay, wait. I got a note telling me that if I came out here…. Uh, my insomnia would go away."

"Insomnia?" the woman said sharply. "Bad dreams?"

"Yes," Oliver admitted. "Same thing, always. A man chasing me and a woman I love, and—"

"And catching you and her anyway," the woman said slowly. "Killing the woman— and you're an Egyptian, so are they, you're in Egypt, sometime during the—"

"Third dynasty, I'm pretty sure, from looking up things I saw in the dreams," Oliver said slowly. "You… you, too?"

"Yes," the woman said, and she relaxed out of her combat stance. She hesitated, then turned on a dim flashlight with a red lens, revealing a face that struck Oliver immediately as gorgeous— high cheekbones, a nose that was just the right size between eyes of a brilliant, gleaming brown, and a mouth that looked like it smiled a lot. "Holy crap, you're Oliver Queen."

"Yeah," he said, nodding. "And you're Dinah Lance. You got totally shafted, lady, that should've been your win. Simon Cowell is an ass who wouldn't know a singer if she ran up and gave him the kick to the nuts he so richly deserves."

Dinah Lance blushed, but smiled. "You're a fan of the X-Factor?"

"Not so much— I couldn't exactly watch TV much the last seven years— but my Dad's wife has the whole freaking series on DVD, and I've seen some of it," Oliver admitted. "I remember you— and you were way, way better than that Bertinelli girl— you should've won."

"Thanks," Dinah said, and she took a deep breath. "Hey, let's see what we can find— this is the right spot, isn't it?"

"My GPS says it is, within three feet," Oliver agreed. "So… let's see if there's anything here to find… or if we were just supposed to meet up, since we both—"

"Uh, Oliver," Dinah said. She was looking over his shoulder at something in the dim red light of her flashlight. "Look at the tree behind you."

Oliver turned and saw an Eye of Horus carved into the tree… and an arrow pointing up.

"Well, I always did like climbing trees," Oliver said. He shrugged off his quiver, set it next to the bow he'd dropped, and said, "Point that thing up, would you? I see… something up there."

Dinah obliged, and Oliver went up the tree about forty feet, unlashed the two large bundles that had been tied up there, and lowered them with the rope they'd been tied there with, which was just exactly long enough for the job.

Dinah waited for him, and when he got down, she pointed wordlessly at the two canvas-wrapped bundles, each about eight feet long, five wide, and three or four feet thick. Their first names were on them, hers on the slightly smaller bundle, his on the larger.

"They don't weigh enough for how big and bulky they are, either," Dinah said. "I probably don't have to tell you that, you lowered them down here."

"Yeah, I noticed," he agreed. "Maybe twenty pounds apiece, awfully light.

"Well… shall we take them out of here, or just open them now?"

"I'm opening mine," Dinah replied, and bent to unfasten the cargo strap that wrapped the bundle with her name on it.

They got them open at about the same time, and both stared at what lay revealed in the red light from Dinah's flashlight.

Each package held a helmet in a hawk motif, and a large pair of wings, complete with straps to fasten them onto a human body.

"Holy crap," Oliver said softly. "These… I know how to wear these, how to _use_ these— Dinah, I know how to _fly_ with these things!"

Dinah Lance nodded slowly and said, "Yeah. Me, too.

"Holy crap."

A couple of hundred feet away, at the edge of the woods, a man in a blue and gold costume, complete with a golden helmet that covered his entire head, nodded once. Then he said, very quietly, but in a pleased tone, "Welcome back, my friends—" and vanished, though without his customary flash of light in the shape of an ankh….


	4. A New Heroic Age

A New Heroic Age

_Friday 27 September 2013_

Clarissa Kent had finished all of the possible preparation for her debut as Diamond— then gotten _insanely_ busy at work. Her investigation of corruption in the Metropolis Parks and Recreation Department, aided by Lois Lane's keen political insight, had led her to a story that needed to be told. A week and a half of work had given her everything she needed, including evidence of crimes committed by Ken Giffen, chief assistant to Councilman Ordway. Once Clarissa had gotten her evidence in order, before she went to the police or Perry, she went to the Councilman— and he helped her and the police in the sting that resulted in Ken Giffen's arrest for embezzlement, graft, murder and other violations of the RICO Act.

She'd been so busy being Clarissa Kent, reporter, that she hadn't had much time to herself, not for anything— so Diamond's debut had been delayed. Now, though, Giffen was in jail in lieu of a million dollar bond (it turned out that there had been _multiple_ murders committed to cover his crimes), and Clarissa had been told by Perry to simply stay on top of the Giffen story for the rest of the week, so she had time to herself. Here it was, Friday night, and she was ready to go out and see about saving some lives.

She put on her costume, looked herself over in the mirror, blushed a little, nodded once— and started for her third-story balcony. She waited there, searching the area with telescopic and x-ray vision, until she could be certain that she wasn't being observed— then moved out at a speed too fast to be seen.

She flew around over the city, very high, watching for trouble spots that might require unusual assistance— and she nearly missed a situation that seriously needed her help.

She'd been watching the city from a couple of miles up, and when she noticed a great many people coming out onto the streets, even more onto rooftops, all looking up, she frowned and looked up herself—

— something was falling out of the sky, falling fast, faster than the speed of sound, and even as Clarissa looked at it, the last of its heat shielding ripped away, and it fell, moving too fast, starting to burn.

_Satellite?_ she thought. _But why would a satellite have heat shielding, they aren't meant for re-entry._

A quick scan with super-vision, as she thought of the combination of telescopic and x-ray vision, determined that the thing had no living occupants, and hadn't been made for any. It also showed her the badly damaged area on the side of the satellite that had probably come from a meteorite hit, which would've been what knocked it out of orbit and sent it crashing towards Metropolis.

She'd already started moving, calculating the time to impact, her necessary actions, and the speeds she'd need to use to stop this thing from causing massive damage. Her biggest worry was about it breaking up when she slowed it— that would mean multiple targets to chase, and that could be bad.

She reached the satellite, which was about the size of three city buses pressed together side by side. She felt the heat from it, but it didn't bother her— she had not felt heat as pain since sometime around her fifteenth birthday— and she managed to find a good, strong surface to brace against.

She leaned into the falling satellite, pressed against it, and started flying against its descent, increasing her speed against its as rapidly as she dared. Too much pressure too fast would break the thing, not enough would result in it crashing into the city and doing terrifying amounts of damage to both lives and property.

She felt it slow, kept her eyes downward. This was bad— she wasn't going to be able to change its vector at all, by her calculation. If she tried that, she'd lose headway against its downward velocity, and it was going to be close as it was.

"Come on," she muttered, flying up just a tiny bit harder. "Come on, you beast, slow down. Slow _down!"_

She knew it was slowing, could _feel_ it slowing— but could also feel the tension in the surface of the thing as it started to warp around her body. Too much of that, and it would break, and she was afraid that one break would just be the start of things, that it would shatter and spread and do horrible amounts of damage.

Now she could make out individual people on the street— the damned thing was headed for Chelsea, the nightclub and bar neighborhood of Downtown Metropolis— and that seemed to fuel her determination. She slowly increased the upward pressure, spread her whole body against the satellite, not just her back and arms. That seemed to help a great deal, to spread the force she exerted against gravity more evenly and that let her press upwards more fully.

The satellite slowed, slowed more— and then it stopped, and she found herself holding the thing up some forty-two feet above the middle of Swan Avenue and a whole bunch of people lined up at the windows of various bars and clubs, more still lining rooftops around the area, and even some standing in the street.

Slowly, she shifted so that her shoulders and arms took the weight of the satellite, and she called down, "Clear the street, please— I'm afraid to try and carry this any direction but down, it feels like it's about to break."

Wonder of wonders, people actually listened, and the street cleared quickly. She lowered one end of the satellite to the street, then walked out from under it, lowering the other end as she moved out from under it. Once the thing was down, she breathed a huge sigh of relief— mixed relief at having stopped the thing, and having had a costume on, _ready_ and on, before she had to do something so very public.

Suddenly, the hundreds of people standing around started clapping and cheering. For just a couple of claps, it was one woman near the front of the crowd on the nearest sidewalk— and then it seemed like _everybody_ joined in.

A cop car rolled up, and the sergeant who got out looked around at the clapping people, then at the woman who stood there holding up her hands for quiet. As the sergeant approached her, the crowd quieted.

She wore a midnight-blue bodysuit, snug and form-fitting, showing off a body that some actresses would probably make deals with the devil to have. Gloves and boots in a deep, wine-red covered hands and feet, and a mask of the same dark blue as the rest of the outfit covered most of the woman's face, leaving only her deeply-set blue eyes, mouth and chin showing. A hole in the back of the mask let out a ponytail of thick blond hair.

Centered on the chest of the bodysuit was an image of a diamond, a standard-cut diamond seen from the side, white delineated by gray and pale blue lines.

"Uh, lady, how did you… did you catch this thing?" the sergeant asked slowly.

"I did," she replied. She tapped the symbol on her chest and said, her voice raised so that everyone could hear her, "I'm Diamond. I'm… I want to help people."

That got a response from the crowd— they started clapping again, and someone shouted, "Hey, Diamond— that's a pretty good start, right there!"

"I've got to agree," the sergeant said. "This thing would've killed… hundreds, maybe thousands of people. And the property damage… holy crap, I don't even want to think about it.

"Thanks, Diamond."

A lot of the crowd echoed him, and Diamond smiled widely.

"You're welcome," she called, loudly enough that everyone heard her. Then she leaned close to the cop and said, "Sir, I have… unusual vision powers. I've examined this thing outside and in, and I can't find any markings at all indicating what nation put it in orbit, not anywhere. If you haven't already, you might want to notify the FBI, let them figure out who else needs to be told about this."

The sergeant blinked, then nodded. "Okay. I'll do that, thanks."

"Thank you, Sergeant." Diamond rose up into the sky, stopped at around fifty feet and said loudly, "I'll be around as much as I can, ladies and gentlemen— I can't be everywhere at once, I can't stop every crime or disaster— but I will do what I can.

"Good night, all."

As she flew away, Diamond could hear the crowd cheering behind her, and she grinned like a kid on Christmas morning as she rose into the sky.

Before she stopped flying around and helping people some four hours later, Diamond had stopped a dozen robberies and burglaries, another seven muggings and armed assaults, nine drunk drivers, four instances of domestic abuse, one in-progress rape— that one left her with a bad taste in her mouth and a desire to weep for the victim— and the attempted kidnapping of the ten year-old daughter of Metropolis industrialist Toby Manning.

She went home at two, moving at super speed to stay invisible, changed into shorts and a T-shirt in preparation for bed, and poured herself a glass of wine. She had just sat down at her computer when her phone rang. She glanced at it, smiled, and answered.

"Shouldn't you be in bed by now?" she asked immediately.

"My daughter," said her father's voice, "is out there doing a couple dozen amazing things… and you expect me to _sleep?"_

"That's _our_ daughter, Jonathan Kent," Martha said— she was apparently on the extension. "Honey… we're over here in danger of popping from our crazy amounts of pride."

"Thank you, both of you," Clarissa said, sighing happily. "I feel… marvelous. Amazing. Better than that."

"You deserve to," Martha assured her. "Love you, Clarissa Lynn."

"We both do," her father added.

"I love you, too," she said. "Maybe I'll come out sometime soon."

"When you do, the steaks are on us, this time," Jonathan said.

"Thanks, Dad," Clarissa chuckled. "Good night, Mom, Dad."

They said goodnight, and Clarissa drank her wine, read a couple of chapters of the latest Kinsey Millhone mystery, and went to sleep with a smile on her face.

**88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888**

_Saturday 28 September 2013_

In a small house in Sasbachwalden, Germany, Anna Kurtzen stared at the TV, watched as the costumed heroine Diamond lowered a satellite that had fallen from orbit to the ground.

"At last." She smiled and reached for the telephone, dialed a number. When a woman answered on the other end, Anna said, "This is the Hippolyta. It is time.

"Sound the call. Every cell may send one champion. When the champions for Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Australia, Africa, Asia, the Arab nations, the Indian nations, North America and South America are determined, send them to me via the moon-roads. I will oversee the final rounds of the tournament."

"As you command, Hippolyta," the woman on the other end answered. "Seven days should be enough. I will call you when we are ready to send the final eight."

Anna hung up, then turned on her computer to see what the world thought of this Diamond, this woman who heralded a new heroic age.

"A woman," Anna said softly as her computer booted. "I like that, I like it very much… but it is most… unexpected."

She smiled, opened Google Chrome, and started looking at the attitudes of the world towards this Diamond person.

**88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888**

_Metropolis:_

"Clarissa! Hey, you!"

Clarissa stopped and looked around, saw Lois Lane waving at her from halfway down the block, and stepped closer to the wall of the building she'd been passing to wait for the other woman out of the way of other pedestrians.

"Hi, Lois," Clarissa said when Lois caught up to her. "Where are you headed on this fine fall morning?"

"I need coffee," Lois said. She looked chagrined. "I forgot to get any last night— I was going to go out before I went to bed, but then the biggest news story in the last decade hit, and I got distracted."

Clarissa willed herself not to blush as she said, "Well, it got good coverage. Ron Troupe jumped on it, got good pics from some of the witnesses who had phone-cams, and he wrote a good story."

"It was good," Lois admitted. She looked at Clarissa and said, "You could've done better. Your work in crime reporting probably gives you an edge on something like superheroes."

"I don't know," Clarissa admitted. "I suspect I'll find out, though. Heck, we probably both will."

"I'd like to find out a _lot_ about her," Lois said, a wicked grin spreading across her face. "Especially that body…."

Clarissa couldn't find a single thing to say to that.

"Oh, dear, am I shocking you, Smallville?" Lois asked, her voice a mix of amused and contrite.

"No, not really, I just… well, I guess maybe a little."

"Sorry. I forget that not everyone is comfortable with 'alternate lifestyles,' so to speak."

"It's not that," Clarissa said hurriedly. "I'm… well, I can't decide if I'm bi and prefer women, or gay with exceptions."

"Oh, my," Lois said softly. "In that case, before we diverge from this subject, would you like to go out tonight?"

Clarissa opened her mouth to answer— and nothing came out. After a moment of frustration, she nodded, rather emphatically.

Lois smiled— less wicked and more pleased, this time— and said, "Okay. I'm kind of a traditionalist, which I realize would shock some people, but there it is. Dinner and a movie?"

"Okay," Clarissa agreed. "Yes. What time…?"

"I can pick you up at… six?" Lois suggested. "Casual clothes, or maybe lightly dressy? I'm not going to ask you to dress to the nines, here."

"Okay, yes," Clarissa agreed. "I have a dress that isn't… too dressy. Okay?"

"You in a dress?" Lois said, smiling a little more wickedly. "Very okay.

"Ah, there's Cassidy's. You know, before he started the coffee shops, Daniel Cassidy was a Hollywood stuntman."

"I didn't know that, no," Clarissa said, following Lois into the coffee shop. "Why'd he quit?"

"He got hurt trying to save a couple of actors from a cave-in on some island where they were shooting a monster movie," Lois said. "Couldn't really do the work any more, but the settlement from the insurance company was pretty big, so he started Cassidy's Coffees." She ordered a cup, offered to buy one for Clarissa, who politely refused, and bought a bag of beans to take home. "So where were you headed, Clarissa?"

"Just down the street, actually," Clarissa said, tilting her head to the left. "Four Color Dreams. I was so busy with the story this week, I didn't pick up my subscriptions, and the new issue of _Marvel Prime_ should be out. I'm dying to know how Aunt May found out that MJ is— uh, I should probably tell you that I'm a geek, shouldn't I?"

"Oh, please," Lois said, rolling her eyes. "The explanation for May knowing that MJ is Spider-woman makes sense, _and_ we get two more heroes in the issue."

"You're a comics reader?" Clarissa asked, a smile lighting up her face.

"My dad taught me to read with _the New Warriors,"_ Lois said. "I gave up on the mainstream stuff for a while when Marvel and Wildstorm both went bugshit for company-wide crossovers and retcons, but I do like _Marvel Prime,_ and I love pretty much all of Apocryphal Comics' titles."

They talked comics through Clarissa picking up her subscriptions— which, Lois was pleased to see, included the new issues of _Gryphon and Unicorn_ and _Pentacle,_ both from Apocryphal Comics— then went their separate ways until six o'clock.

Lois fully approved of Clarissa in a pale blue dress that, while not short or overly tight, still managed to be sexy, and Clarissa liked Lois's own similarly designed dress in a darker blue. They enjoyed dinner, saw _the World's End_ and both laughed uproariously through most of the movie.

As they left the theater, Lois said, "So, Clarissa, shall I take you home, offer you dessert somewhere, dancing somewhere, or—"

"I think you should kiss me," Clarissa interrupted. "Please. If you want to."

Lois blinked, then smiled, pulled the other woman close, and kissed her. It went on for some time, and became very intense.

"I've wanted you to do that," Clarissa said when they parted, "since the day I actually met you."

"You might remember that the first thing I said to you was that I wouldn't mind sharing a byline with you— or dinner," Lois replied, her lips still lightly against Clarissa's. "So the feeling's mutual."

"Come home with me," Clarissa said. "It's not far, just a few blocks. Come with me and stay the night, please."

"My place is just two blocks," Lois said, smiling. "Mind if we go by there so I can grab something to wear tomorrow?"

"That's fine," Clarissa agreed. "That's… better than fine."

It turned out that Lois lived only three blocks from Clarissa. They stopped at Lois's only long enough for her to grab some clothes and toiletries, then went to Clarissa's apartment, and very shortly thereafter, to bed. The sex was intense and wonderful, and left them both pleasantly sleepy. They fell asleep with Lois spooned up to Clarissa's back, and were still in that position when they woke at a little after four to the sounds of sirens passing by in great numbers.

"What the hell…?" Lois said as she say up. "Sirens at this hour? This must be bad. Do you have—"

"It's a fire," Clarissa said, staring at the blank wall of her bedroom, "over in Suicide Slum, my god, it's huge, there are—" She stopped, got up, and went to her closet, began fiddling with something at the very back of it. "Lois, I'm going to have to trust you with something… huge. But I do trust you, I need you to know that, okay?"

"How do you know what's happening in Suici— whoa!"

Clarissa turned, holding her on-a-hanger costume in one hand, the mask with its fake ponytail in the other. She blurred as she moved to the edge of the bed, set those things down, then went to the vanity across from the foot of the bed and did something too quickly for Lois to tell what it was. When she stood up from the vanity bench, her hair had been pinned tightly to her head. She blurred again as she dressed in her costume— then stood for a moment as Diamond.

"Stay, please?" Diamond said, her voice a little deeper than Clarissa's normal speaking voice, and with just a touch of a New England accent. "I'll be back once I've done… all that I can."

"I'll stay," Lois said, her eyes wide. "Go— hurry!"

For a moment, Diamond turned her eyes to the ceiling, then she blurred again— and vanished out the window of the bedroom.

Lois Lane stood next to the window for a moment, then sighed, pulled on the knee-length T-shirt she'd brought to wear for sleepwear (but forgotten to put on, and been happy to forget) and went to the living room. She found the TV remote, turned on the TV and went to GBNN, the Galaxy Broadcasting's all-news channel. Since they were based in Metropolis, she figured they'd be covering the fire than had sent Clari—

_No. No, she had on the costume. Just like in the comics, codenames to costumes, all the time._ She shook her head. _Help, I've fallen into a comic book, and I can't get out!_

Then she saw Diamond fly across the screen, carrying a section of wall or roof with people clinging to it, at least a dozen people, and she smiled. _Then again… I don't really think I __**want**__ to get out…_.

Lois watched, fascinated, as Diamond first rescued the people in imminent danger, then, flying in tight circles at great speeds, pulled a water spout from the nearby harbor to the burning buildings, and somehow controlled the release of the water so that it fell mostly only where needed. (A lot of firefighters, police, and bystanders got wet from what looked like a very brief, hard rain— but no one seemed to mind. Even the reporters accepted the drenching in good form.)

After the buildings had been put out, Diamond went in and started bringing people out, and a couple of times, she took rescue personnel in to help people that the heroine didn't feel competent moving.

When it was done, and the last person had been brought out, Diamond simply waved, flew up a ways— and vanished in a burst of speed.

Lois heard the window close in the bedroom and went that way. Clarissa had already gotten out of the costume and started for the bathroom with it over her arm.

"That," Lois said as she followed Clarissa into the bathroom, "was amazing. How did you learn all the necessary skills for this?"

"Practice, Lois," Clarissa said. She started the tub filling, poured in dish soap. "I'd discover a new power, play with it, and my parents and I would start thinking about how I could use it to help."

"That's awesome," Lois said. "What the heck is your costume made of, Clarissa? I mean… Dawn to clean it? Really?"

"PVC," Clarissa admitted, blushing. "It, uh, the body of it, it started life as a catsuit. You know, like you see in sex shops?"

"Well, it should be easy to clean," Lois said, hiding a smirk. She reached over and started pulling bobby pins out of Clarissa's hair, setting them on the counter as they came free. "And if it was meant for bondage play, it'll be very tough."

"It… it's tough," Clarissa admitted. "I decided to get it instead of a thinner, more comfortable one because I can put this one on faster without tearing it."

"Ah," Lois said. She watched in silence as Clarissa cleaned her costume then pulled the plug on the tub. "You thought that through— I can only see blurs when you're hurrying."

Clarissa smiled a little, then looked at the costume for a long moment, and set it to steaming.

"Whoa. How'd you do that?"

"Heat vision," Clarissa said. "Very low power.

"Hey, I smell like smoke. I'm going to shower. Would you…?"

"I very much would," Lois said.

It was after six when they went back to sleep, again with Lois spooned up behind Clarissa.

Lois woke up around nine to find Clarissa sitting up in bed, reading a book. When Lois stretched, Clarissa set the book down, picked up a mug of coffee, looked at it for a moment, and handed the now-steaming drink to Lois.

"You made me coffee," Lois said after a sip. "My god, you're practically perfect."

Clarissa laughed and said, "I don't sleep much, so I went out and got it when I woke up again. Heating up again was the same thing I did to dry my costume."

"Neat," Lois said. She set the coffee down and said, "I'll be right back— I want to brush my teeth before I kiss you good morning."

A few minutes later, the coffee was cooling, forgotten, on the bedside.

This time, they didn't go to sleep after making love, but got up and showered, then dressed. Clarissa made them breakfast, then said, "Lois… thank you for not… well, freaking out. Or asking a bunch of questions. Or—"

"You're welcome," Lois said, and she smiled. "Mostly, it's pretty easy. I mean— I was interested in you before I knew you're a superhero, so that… well, it adds another dimension to the interest, sure, but it's not that important. Clarissa matters more than Diamond, I guess is what I'm trying to say."

"Thank you, Lois," Clarissa said, and leaned over to kiss the other woman. "That's… the nicest thing anyone's said to me in a long time.

"And on the flip side… well, you _did_ get to find out a lot about Diamond's body."

Lois laughed and said, "Good point, thank you.

"Hey, if you ever need to leave the _Planet_ offices in the middle of the day, I'll help you cover things, okay?"

Clarissa smiled. "Thanks.

"You have to have questions, Lois. Go ahead and ask them."

"Well, one thing is driving me batshit," Lois admitted. She picked Clarissa's glasses off of her nose, looked through them, and said, "How the heck does a nearly-blind superhero see a fire that's miles away through the walls of… how many buildings?"

Clarissa laughed and explained the glasses trick. "As for seeing through buildings… I call it x-ray vision, but it isn't, actually. I don't emit any radiation, I'm just… seeing in some spectrum that doesn't seem to mind solid objects below a certain density. I can see through lead, though I have to… I guess strain. Any more dense than that, I can't do it."

"Neat," Lois said. She smirked a little and said, in a teasing voice, "So, had you seen me naked before last night?"

"No," Clarissa said, and she smiled a little. "I haven't used it like that since… my freshman year of college, and that was… I was actually checking to see if it was a guy in drag that was coming onto a girl's only dorm floor. It wasn't, but if you'd seen her, you'd understand why I checked. She was a weightlifter, and really tall." She dimpled. "Also really pretty. I was kind of glad I checked."

"Why, oh why am I always attracted to the good girls and guys?" Lois sighed. "I mean, seriously. I never went through a bad-boy phase, I just go straight for the nice ones.

"Of course, you being nice in no way makes you a prude, Clarissa. Last night was… intense. Wonderfully intense."

"Yes," Clarissa agreed. "It was, Lois.

"So— next question?"

"Just one more, really," Lois said. "Was it you that caused the anomaly zone around Smallville?"

Clarissa blinked in surprise, then said, "Yes, that was me. I think if you'd done a more intense study of the area, you'd have noticed that it dropped off some when I was at college, tended to happen more around break times, at least the first year."

"Only the first year?" Lois asked.

"After that, Dad and Mom said that local folks were noticing the drop off in 'lucky saves,' and I started spending as much time as I could in the Smallville area. I can fly extremely fast, so it wasn't that hard."

"Your parents are very smart," Lois said. "Good deal.

"That about covers it, then."

Clarissa sat with her mouth open for a long moment, and Lois smiled and said, "Honey, I don't need to know more than I do. Sure, part of me would like to— but I don't need to know more to know that I've found one hell of a woman.

"The woman is more important to me than the superhero. If you want to tell me other stuff, I'll listen, and I'll probably ask questions then to make sure I understand, but for now?

"I know everything I need to know about you for now."

Clarissa smiled, leaned over, and kissed Lois firmly. The kiss went places… and they made love in the kitchen.

They spent the morning and afternoon just talking, comparing favorite books, shows, movies, foods. They told each other tales of realizing that they were attracted to other women, of disastrous dates and college days.

After supper— eaten in, Clarissa cooked hamburgers on a grill on her balcony— Lois kissed Clarissa goodbye, and went home.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Lois said. "And we can definitely do lunch. But Sunday evening is my 'call dad' time, and I have some notes to finish up before I go in tomorrow.

"Clarissa… thank you for trusting me the way you did."

"Thank you for proving me right to trust you," Clarissa said, and kissed her once more. "See you tomorrow."

Lois left, and, after a few moments of thought, Clarissa picked up her phone and called her parents. Her mother answered, and Clarissa said, "Hi, Mom. I think I'm falling in love…."

**88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888**

They did have lunch together every day at work— except Wednesday, when Lois had a luncheon interview with the lieutenant governor of Delaware— and had dinner and watched a movie that night to make up for missed lunch. Clarissa ended up staying the night at Lois's house that night, and found it perfectly comfortable to do so.

Thursday night, they went to a Daft Punk concert together— Clarissa had gotten the tickets from a cop who confiscated them from his daughter as punishment, and only charged her what the kid had paid— and back to Clarissa's afterward. That night, while they showered off the smell of marijuana (they hadn't smoked, but it seemed that everyone around them had), Clarissa asked Lois if she'd be willing to go have dinner with Clarissa's parents Friday.

"Meeting the parents, huh?" Lois said, holding her hair up while Clarissa scrubbed her back. "I'd like that. I take it that they know that you told me about your secret identity?"

"Yes," Clarissa said. "They trust my instincts on that sort of thing, so I didn't even get lectured."

"Should I bring anything?" Lois asked.

"A six pack of beer wouldn't hurt, so long as you exhibit the same taste that you do when buying for yourself." Clarissa chuckled. "Although it might result in me having to take some out there every time I go— I've never seen Diplomatic Hitman Ale anywhere outside of Metropolis, and I'm pretty sure mom and dad would both love it."

"How should I dress?"

"Jeans and whatever," Clarissa said. "Homey dinner, not fancy. Dad's making fried chicken— it's spicy, but tasty— and Mom's handling the dessert and probably the mashed potatoes— Dad always gets the milk-to-butter ration wrong."

"My dad does great with breakfast, and he can make a mean burger, but past that… no cook." Lois shook her head and let her hair down, turned to Clarissa. "He made Italian Beef once that… well, I'm surprised that Italy didn't declare war."

"Ouch," Clarissa said. She hesitated a moment, then said, "You… never mention your mom."

"She died when I was six," Lois said quietly. "I… don't remember her very well, honestly."

"I'm sorry," Clarissa said, and hugged her. "I didn't mean to call up anything unhappy."

"You didn't," Lois said, hugging back tightly. "The memories I do have of her are happy ones. I sort of feel sorry for Lucy— my little sister— she was only three months old when Mom died, and doesn't remember her at all." Lois lifted her head from Clarissa's shoulder and smirked a little. "Here's a funny for you; Lucy is a better cook than my dad… and she's completely blind, has been since birth."

"That's priceless," Clarissa said. "Your dad still in the military?"

"Oh, yeah," Lois said. "Colonel Samuel Lane will retire when they force him to, not before. He's in Hawaii, stationed at Fort Shafter. Lucy's there, too, she's a junior at Hawaii Pacific University. Majoring in International Studies— and she surfs every day."

"That," Clarissa said, grinning, "is absolutely awesome."

"Yeah." Lois smirked a little and said, "Thought Dad was gonna bust a blood vessel when she first started. Thing is, she's good, and she's careful. Never goes alone, has a sonic beacon on the beach that she can focus on to get there if she can't hear her partner calling. It's cool. I went out there last Christmas, stayed a week, and she taught me the basics of surfing.

"Hey. We're clean. Want to get dirty again?"

Clarissa's smile answered that.

**88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888**

_Friday 04 October 2013_

Lois had a twelve pack of Diplomatic Hitman Ale to take to the Kents' when Clarissa arrived to pick her up. Clarissa laughed, nodded her thanks, and produced a "space blanket," one of those thin, silvery things used by rescue workers.

"If I'm going to get us there at speed, you'll need this," Clarissa said— and then produced a small oxygen bottle and mask from the folds of the blanket. "And, if I'm going to maintain invisible speeds, this."

"How long will the trip take?" Lois asked.

"Three and a half, four minutes, depending on what I have to do to avoid satellites spotting us and causing a freakout." Clarissa rolled her eyes and said, "You can imagine the freakout caused by something moving at Mach Oh-Shit across the continental United States, right?"

" 'Mach Oh-Shit,' that's priceless," Lois snorted. "Yeah, I can imagine my dad reacting to it— that's pretty much enough." Lois looked thoughtful for a moment then whistled. "I'm just roughing it in my head, mind you, but that's about… uh, more than fifty thousand miles an hour…?"

"Yes," Clarissa said. "So you'll understand why I'm doing this." She blurred out of sight for a moment, then reappeared in her Diamond costume. "Let's get you and the beer wrapped up…."

Five minutes later, Clarissa landed inside the Kents' barn, which had been left open specifically with her landing there in mind. Her parents were waiting in the barn, never having seen her in her costume in person, and both grinned proudly for a moment before Clarissa again blurred and changed.

"Mom, Dad, this is Lois Lane, fellow reporter, excellent reporter, fellow geek, and all around wonderful lady," Clarissa said. "Lois, my dad, Jonathan Kent, gentleman farmer, and my mom, Martha Kent, lady farmer and pretty well known painter."

"Hello, Lois," Jonathan said, shaking her hand. He grinned and said, "Clarissa says you're as good on political reporting as she is on crime, which is saying a lot. And I loved your piece on the Amazons. You need to submit that for a Pulitzer."

"Thanks," Lois said, blushing just a little. "Perry— our editor— seems to think so, too, and Mr. Scott. I probably will… but I'll be nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs until the announcements are made."

"Jonathan's right," Martha said, stepping up and shaking Lois's hand. "Add in the opinions of your editor and the owner of your paper, and I think 'probably' is not really an option."

Lois laughed and said, "You and my dad, I swear.

"Hey, Clarissa said I could bring beer, and this—" She bent and picked up the twelve of beer she'd brought. "—is utterly amazing stuff. If you like it as much as I do, I expect Clarissa will be ferrying it out here a lot."

" 'Diplomatic Hitman Ale?' " Jonathan snorted at the cartoonish picture of a tuxedoed and monocled man aiming a rifle straight out of the carton. "I like the name already.

"Come on in, supper will be about fifteen minutes."

Jonathan and Martha made Lois very welcome, and never said a word that could have been taken as a negative opinion of their daughter dating a woman. The food was excellent, and Lois ate very well. "I'll pay for this at the gym tomorrow, but this is so worth it. What is in this gravy, it's amazing."

They talked food until after dessert (Martha's peach pie), then all moved into the living room.

"So, I take it Clarissa told you her big secret," Martha said with no animosity at all. "I like that you don't seem to care at all."

"That she's Diamond? I care a lot." Lois smiled and said, "But that's not why I'm interested in her. Adds layers, sure, but I was interested before I ever found out."

"You… oh." Martha looked thoughtful. "You haven't asked… why she's got all the powers that she does?"

"Nope," Lois said. She smiled a little at Martha's speculative look, and Jonathan's open surprise. "I'm curious, sure— but I don't need to know. I know the necessary things, and can wait for the rest— if she ever decides that she wants to tell me, Clarissa knows I'll listen."

"Clarissa Lynn Kent," Martha said, a big smile blossoming on her face, "this one is a treasure."

"And then some," Jonathan said. "I don't know if I could refrain from asking the questions she's obviously refrained from asking, and I'm not a reporter."

Clarissa took a deep breath and said, "That's part of why I wanted to bring her here. I thought… well, it's going to be pretty hard to believe, some of it, and I thought that, with your input, it might be easier." She turned to Lois and took her hand. "Lois, you said that you'd listen when I wanted to tell you… and that's now."

"All right," Lois said. She sensed that Clarissa was nervous, and said, "Hey. It's okay. Knowing what I do, I can't imagine that you could tell me anything that would make me feel anything negative about you."

"I hope you're right." Clarissa took a deep breath and said, "We don't know exactly why I have all of the powers I do, if it's because… because everyone where I came from had them, or if there's something about Earth that's different that gives me the powers."

Lois Lane was in no way stupid. She got the implications right away— and Martha and Jonathan Kent both breathed carefully concealed sighs of relief when she said, "Well, that wasn't what I expected, but it's fascinating. How did you get here?"

"I think I should let Mom and Dad explain that," Clarissa said, a certain tension going out of her face and body in a rush.

"It started the night we moved in here," Jonathan Kent said. "We'd bought the place without ever coming out here, through the mail and over the internet, so no one knew that, when we came here, we didn't have a daughter…."

They told the story, and Martha showed Lois the sketches that she'd done of Clarissa's birth parents and the little bit of their world that she'd seen. The told of Clarissa's burgeoning super powers, starting at the age of thirteen.

Lois listened, and occasionally laughed at the predicaments that Clarissa had gotten herself into— the first time she'd run at super-speed, she'd torn off all her clothes.

"Fortunately, I was running home when it happened," Clarissa said. "If I'd been running to school— ugh."

Lois listened, and she held Clarissa's hand, or kept an arm around her, or had Clarissa's arm around her, the whole time. Jonathan watched with approval as Lois reacted not at all to learning that Clarissa wasn't an Earth-human. (Unless you counted "smiling and touching" as reacting, which it was— but in a way that they older Kents approved of wholeheartedly.)

"That's… amazing," Lois sighed when the story had been told. "It's… I'm glad that your parents— birth parents, sorry, Jonathan, Martha— were able to save you. Even if they couldn't save themselves or anyone else, Clarissa, every life you save? That makes their decision that much more important, that much more _right._

"I hope you know that."

"I do." Clarissa smiled and kissed Lois briefly. "I do, and thank you for saying it."

"This is just… do you realize, honey, that you validate every single geek and nerd on the planet?" Lois chuckled as she said, "There is life out there. And if there's one world that can produce someone so human that I couldn't tell the difference? Then that hugely increases the odds that there are others.

"You're not just a superhero, you're a validation of the faith of everyone who ever wanted to believe that there is life out there in the rest of the universe."

"I… never thought of it like that." Clarissa looked thoughtful. "Wow. Thanks, Lois."

"You're welcome." Lois grinned wickedly. "And you're welcome for me not pointing out the damage you did to your own geek cred by not realizing how very cool you are."

That set them all to laughing.

Lois and Clarissa left around nine Kansas time, and Lois received a very sincere invitation to return as often as she could. Martha actually hugged her before the younger women left, which plainly pleased both Clarissa and Lois.

Once they'd arrived at Lois's apartment and Clarissa had changed to civvies, Lois asked Clarissa to stay the night.

"I'd like that," Clarissa said, smiling. "But… Lois, I need to say something, first."

"All right," Lois said. She took both of the other woman's hands in hers. "Say on."

"I took you out to meet my folks tonight," Clarissa said slowly, "because it was very important to me that I… do things in the right order, Lois. I needed… I needed you to know that I'm… well, we're geeks, so I'm okay with saying that I'm an alien. Humanoid, but an alien.

"I needed you to hear that, to know that… before I told you that I love you."

Lois Lane's smile widened, and she pulled Clarissa close and kissed her. When they broke, she said, "That's… possibly the sweetest thing that any one has ever done for me, Clarissa Kent. Putting that… that _level_ of truth out there, making sure that I knew that before you tell me you love me… is it any wonder that I love you, too?"

They kissed again, more urgently, and Lois smiled when they parted. "You want to zip home and get stuff for the weekend now, or wait until tomorrow?"

"The weekend?" Clarissa said, raising an eyebrow. "You only asked me to stay the night."

"If you think that you're going to go home tomorrow without a fight after telling me that you love me," Lois said, "then you may have just met your very first supervillain, lady."

"Ah." Clarissa slipped out of Lois's arms and said, "Hold that thought," before disappearing in a blur and a sharp breeze.

In less than a minute, she returned, a sports bag in her hands.

Lois took Clarissa's hand and led her to the bedroom.


End file.
